The Marriage Plot question

when you are as depressed as Leonard is, and when you are a person suffering from depression generally speaking , you see yourself like a worthless piece of junk, and everything gets to be a selfless act, divorce, running away from family and friends, even and especially suicide. It's a way of thinking about you being a burden, an insufferable person that makes everybody miserable with your misery and the only solution is to do your selfless act despite the pain and anguish that you put the others through. And if I remember correctly Leonard runs away and disappears someplace far away where nobody can find him.

I wouldn't view it as "selfless," if, for no other reason, because of the impulsive, reckless manner in which he did it. I think it was the explosion of a lot of feelings of worthlessness and of being a torture to Madeline and others.

I generally agree with Andreea's opinion and would overall say, "Selfless to me?" No. "Selfless to Leonard?" Quite possibly in a sense, but hard to see from his perspective, even as a longtime sufferer of depression myself.

In my younger days, I was a Madeleine type who kept being drawn to Leonard types, and inevitably they did push me away, all the while telling me how noble they were being and how much I would thank them for it later. (One actually said, "One day we'll both look back on this and laugh.") Today, I have to count my lucky stars that I didn't end up married to one of those difficult men, but I still have pretty bad feelings about the way they treated me, and I definitely don't feel like laughing about it.

All this is a long way of saying that, no, I don't think that Leonard was really being selfless, even though I am convinced that he thought he was. The really selfless thing would have been to sit down with her and rationally talk about things. I'm sure you can argue that he just didn't have that capacity in his state of mind, but to me, that's what selflessness is-- giving more than you think you can for somebody else's sake.

It's been a while since I read this, and my memory is hazy, but I sort of recall thinking it was selfish of him to marry her in the first place, knowing—and I'm sure he knew—what a terrible husband he would make in the end. So yes, in that sense it was definitely selfless of him to at last put that marriage out of its misery.

He let her go. That was selfless on his part since he knew he could never be good enough, stable etc for her.

I hated this book and the female lead character so whiny and weak and spoiled and entitled ARGHHHHHH. Just wanted slap her. The only character I found intersting was Leonard but not enough to redeem the book. It is so bad, almost as bad as the Replacement wife.....