From
From
In Nine Princes in Amber, Corwin mounts a suicidal attempt on Amber, never withdrawing.
In Creatures of Light and Darkness, the Prince’s wife commits suicide, and the Prince offers himself up to be killed as part of a bargain. Typhon commits apparent suicide as well.
In Lord of Light, Taraka suicides, as does another demon earlier on. So does Rild. All apparently know what they are doing. Sam is brought back from death and resents it. The God/Goddess of Thieves commits a crime even though she knows it will lead to her death. Yama commits temporary suicide with an escape plan.
In general, I think “suicide” is oversimplifying his perspective, but “doing potentially suicidal things” is a big theme in Zelazny. Risking all, and sometimes not even for obvious reasons – a sort of “because it was there” philosophy.
From Chris Kovacs: I don’t think suicide is a hugely prevalent theme in Zelazny’s work, but it is there, and you missed quite a few things. It’s especially among the earlier short stories and novellas where there are lots of brooding and suicidal characters. A Rose for Ecclesiastes – the story ends with the arrogant main character waking up from a suicide attempt in the ship’s dispensary. This Moment of the Storm – the character wants to die, his beloved was killed, and he puts himself into suspended animation. The Doors of His Face (etc) reveals a number of psychological aspects about the main character’s motivations, one of which is a fascination with death and mortality, and probably a death wish. One of my favourites of his short works is Angel, Dark Angel – the superpowered immortal-like agent of death kills himself at the end in order to allow his beloved to survive. Etc etc.
And don’t forget Corwin — he admitted trying to kill himself before, and then tried to throw himself over the cliff when Deirdre died.
I don’t see much of him often, but I haven’t much liked any of the things I’ve seen linked to, even before the whole #mooreandme thing happened.