Question

Ernest Hemingway was a physically strong, proud man who developed grave concerns about his failing body. Depressed about his progressive illness, he intentionally ended his life. Edwin Shneidman would term Hemingway a:
a. death initiator
b. death darer.
c. death seeker.
d. death ignorer.

Answer 1

Answer:

a. death initiator

Explanation:

According to Edwin Shneidman, self-murder is defined as an action in the individual involved cause his own death. In other words, it is an intentional, direct and conscious effort of an individual to end his / her life.

Shneidman however, grouped self-murders into four, of which they are:

1. Death Initiators: those that want the death to come quickly because, they believe they cannot survive death at that moment, either due to health or accident.

2. Death seekers: these set of people wish to end their life, and not necessarily because of health issues. It may be due to other reasons e.g poverty.

3. Death darers: this set of people tends to fancy the idea of ending their lives themselves.

4. Death ignorers: this group of people believe in another life after ending their lives themselves, often times, they want to end their lives to go have a better life in afterlife.

Therefore, Shneidman would term Ernest Hemingway as a Death Initiator, because he believed that, his death is imminent regardless, due to his failing health. So he ended his life sooner.

Answer 2

Answer:

D- death initiator

Explanation:

Death initiators can be defined as the way in which a person initiate his own death due to some condition that is beyond him/her in which the person thought or think he /she can't overcome.

A person with a serious or severe illness may intentionally initiate his /her death because they felt that the illness will eventually lead to death and believing that death is inevitable with such illness.

This situation can also lead to depression in such person.

Therefore based on the scenario what Ernest Hemingway did is termed DEATH INITIATOR because he intentionally initiated his own death due to the severe illness.