In order to counter this specter of unexpectedness, he thinks that if only an entire day could be set aside yearly - a day when people could escape "the smell of death" and the fear of it by committing suicide - then during the rest of the year people wouldn't have to fear death and cower from it. Not surprisingly, the townspeople are suspect of Shadrack's sanity, but they soon come to accept his antics and his National Suicide Day, which becomes "part of the fabric of life" in the Bottom.ĭespite the fact that Shadrack is no longer in combat, he is still overwhelmed by visions in which he sees the horrors of war, and he is especially stunned by the brutal suddenness of death in the midst of battle. He tells the Bottom's residents that only on National Suicide Day should people kill themselves or each other, if that is what they desire. Alone and disoriented, he painfully makes his way back to Medallion and then to the Bottom, his old neighborhood.īack at home in the Bottom, Shadrack creates National Suicide Day, the third day of every new year, when he marches through the community ringing a cowbell and carrying a hangman's rope. Because of a demand for more rooms in the high-risk areas of the veteran's hospital, and because of his violent behavior, Shadrack, a twenty-two-year-old black World War I veteran, is released from the facility where he is being treated for shell-shock today, the diagnosis would probably be post-traumatic stress syndrome.
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