Prominent Writers and Their Bizarre Deaths
John Greene once mentioned in his book (The Fault in our Stars) that a book’s ending is a writer’s responsibility to his readers, like a contract signed even before the prologue. The writers listed below have definitely provided us with the most odd, rebellious and cliffhanging endings. But these writers’ deaths are like something out of their own books, some even more bizarre.
1. EDGAR ALLAN POE
The death of Edgar Allan Poe, the father of Gothic literature, is as gothic and mysterious as his stories. He was said to be found wandering around the streets Maryland and not on his right mind. He was taken to the hospital by someone named Joseph W. Walker. Unfortunately, he died. But no one knows why he died. There is no death certificate on file, and the only known obit lists the cause of death as "congestion of the brain." His passing is most commonly attributed to alcoholism, but many feel his drinking only exacerbated a more serious medical condition such as diabetes, TB, epilepsy, or rabies
2. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
On May 30, 1593, the 29-year-old English poet and playwright, Christopher Marlowe was staying at a house in Deptford, England with three other acquaintances.
After a long day of drinking, the Tamburlaine author and a companion named Ingram Frizer got into an argument over the bar tab. After the exchange of “malicious words,” the two men began to brawl. Frizer pulled out his dagger and plunged it into Marlowe’s head just above his right eye, a two-inch deep wound that ended the playwright’s life instantly.
3. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
On July 8, 1822, the poet’s ship was caught in a storm in Italy’s Gulf of Spezia. Shelley’s body washed ashore weeks later. He was cremated on the shore with a handful of friends. In a final coincidence fit for one of his poems, Shelley’s heart refused to burn during his cremation. (He possibly suffered from a condition that caused calcification of his heart.)
A friend watching the cremation snatched the heart from the flames and gave it to Shelley’s wife, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Legend has it she kept the crumbled remains in her desk.[1]
4. VIRGINIA WOOLF
Virginia Woolf struggled with depression all of her life. She had attempted suicide before but only succeeded when the World War igniting.
Woolfs’ home had been bombed. On 28 March 1941, she put on her overcoat, left her home in Rodmell, England, filled the coat’s pockets with heavy stones and walked into the Ouse River, where she drowned.
Woolf’s suicide letter:
“I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I can’t recover this time. “Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.”
5. ZELDA FITZGERALD
They say love is both an inspiration and a destruction. When Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald married, it was like a scene extracted from a fairytale. Everything went well but as the years went on things got ugly. The couple fought viciously, especially after the publication of Zelda’s autobiographical novel Save Me the Waltz, which basically detailed their failing marriage. Zelda was later on diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 1936, Zelda Fitzgerald entered the Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, where she stayed on and off for the rest of her life. On 10 March 1948, the hospital caught fire. Zelda was killed.
6. ERNEST HEMINGWAY
By the time Ernest Hemingway was in his fifties, a lifetime of hard living and harder drinking had caught up with him.
Hemingway struggled with chronic pain and severe depression. After shock therapy treatments for depression in 1960 caused him to lose his memory and hurt his ability to write, Hemingway decided he had had enough.
On July 2, 1961, Hemingway positioned himself in the foyer of his Ketchum, Idaho home and shot himself in the head with a double-barreled shotgun. It was first reported that Hemingway had accidentally shot himself while cleaning his gun, since suicide carried an even greater stigma at the time than it does now.
7. SYLVIA PLATH
The iconic feminist poet Sylvia Plath referenced her experience with depression in her autobiographical novel The Bell Jar and in poems like “Daddy” and “Lady Lazarus.”
She had received several unsuccessful treatments for chronic depression. On the morning of February 11, 1963, while her children slept in the next room of her London home, she plugged up the door between their room and the kitchen with wet towels. She left a note for her neighbor asking that he call a doctor. Then she knelt on the floor and stuck her head in her gas oven as far as it would go. Plath was found dead with her head still in the oven.
8. TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams secured his place in dramatic history with plays like The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire.
In his personal life, however, Williams wrestled with serious substance abuse.
On February 24, 1983, while administering his nightly tranquilizers, Williams choked to death on a medicine bottle cap in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York City. The drugs he was taking hampered his gag reflex, and Williams was unable to cough out the cap. His body was found the next morning.