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  Death in a community can have a heavy impact on its members. Whether intimately or not, the role each person plays is unique and significant, and when one person is lost the whole group can feel weakened. The short stories "Imperilled Men" by Andre Dubus and "So Tsi-fai" by Sophronia Liu both deal with a suicide in a community in which that person had played a key role. Therefore, the reactions in the communities of "CAG" and So Tsi-fai respectively make for an interesting comparison.
The communities and circumstances of the two characters were rather different. In "Imperilled Men," the Commander of the Air Group, or CAG, was much loved by his community, in this case the USS Ranger, an aircraft carrier in the navy. He is portrayed as a carefree and likeable man with a sense of humour and graceful demeanour by the narrator though "[he] did not really know him"; a view that is later confirmed to be that of anyone who did (294). "We would have followed him into hell," one of the crew members reminisces (299). As a commanding officer, he also had great influence among the crew, being someone they would have looked up to and respected. "He didn't have a family" but the navy was his life, and he had built up a comfortable relationship with the people around him as a result (293).
However it wasn't simply his officer rank that gained him respect among the crew. He was a revered and adored man because of his charming personality and welcoming demeanour. He took practical jokes well, he would find a pleasant thing to say even spontaneously. He walked with a pleasant aura. People spoke about him as if he were the greatest man in the world, but in such popularity, who knew any more about him than the narrator? Everyone had the same opinion about him, but none knew him any better than anyone else.
So Tsi-fai, on the other hand, was the class clown and scapegoat in Liu's narrative. Although described as a "friend" to the narrator, in his school community he was the lazy, "hopeless" child who spent many hours in the corner and whom no one took seriously (321, 319). This is key to his character as his announcement of suicide was looked upon as just "another one of his practical jokes" (320). He was constantly being nagged about his unkempt appearance ("'Filthy, Dirty boy!'"), unacceptable grades ("he flunked three out of fourteen subjects") and "[repetitive offending]" of school rules (319). In addition to that, he had a poor family situation. Neither of his parents could read, therefore he had a lot of outside pressure placed upon him to do very well in school and make something of himself. "[He] was their biggest hope. He had made it to the sixth grade" (319). The problem was, no one had ever helped him reach for such a goal.
In So Tsi-fai's case, it was most likely this pressure and lack of care that drove him to suicide. Much was expected of him by his family, and little acknowledgement was given to what he could do, such as take care of himself. He "helped in the fields, cooked for the family, washed his own clothes" (319). No one was there to care for him, or encourage him to do his homework, or wake him up in the morning (320). Because of these things he had no control over, he was constantly nagged: getting attention the only way possible for him, seeing as no one took any care to him at home. Neither the teachers nor his own family saw how difficult it was for him to attend school and take care of himself in ways the other children didn't. Therefore he found other ways to acquire attention. He was after all, there, wasn't he? He must be at least good at something, even if it was getting in trouble. He smiled when punished, didn't wince when whipped and made faces at his figures of authority. It was as if he were proud of his misbehaviour. It was in fact this need to rebel and draw attention to himself that may have created his suicide stage; he announced quite clearly "I don't need any supper. I have drunk enough insecticide" to tell everyone that once again, true to his character, he was rebelling against what his family expected of him but never cared to reinforce (319).
The CAG, however, took his life out of fear. Whether or not he knew he had the support of most crew members on the ship, homosexuality in the military was prohibited and resulted in court-martial. The military was his life. He had no family and had established himself on that ship as a sort of family member. When he found out that he had been under inspection by the Office of Naval Intelligence, he knew his life in the military was over, and therefore everything which he had worked to establish himself in such a revered position within his community. In fact, his very character was questioned when he had found out; "They were afraid he was going to fly [the plane carrying the ONI investigator] and crash into the sea" (299). The investigators had gone so far as to assume his character to be one that would go insane and take the life of another man and destroy military equipment to avoid penalty. This broke his heart thinking how people trusted him before. It was as if his whole life had shattered in that moment. And even in the end they had knew what would have happened and took no precautions against it. They knew he was going to take his life, and ran back to his cabin when the CAG was nowhere to be found. "They ran?…They ran to his room?" (299).
After the suicide the CAG's importance to his community really became apparent: "The shock was general and hundreds of men did mourn, and each morning we woke to it… in the closed air of the ship it touched us, and it lived above us on the flight deck and in the sky" (299). Though the narrator didn't really know CAG, it was then that he realised he had been a significant member of that community. The ship's morale dropped, and he described his shipmates as "sad" and "shot" (299). "I remember a general sadness" he says, perhaps as much a personal view as one of the ship(293). Knowing how relaxed CAG made him feel helped him to understand how everyone else felt about him. In fact he was so much a part of their community that the members still spoke of him ten years later with regret and passion: "We all knew. We didn’t care." (299).
So Tsi-fai was not held in such esteem, but his presence after death was just as strong. So much so, that it not only lingers eerily in the mind of the narrator twenty-three years later, but actually comes to visit them in the classroom not long after his death. The narrator of this story remembers something similar in general morale; "[f]rozen and dazed", she describes it, a feeling she also shared(320). Then during a chilling gust of wind in the classroom, every student's memory was brought to life as they all seem to see the ghost of So Tsi-fai come into the classroom, late, gasping, and grotesque. "An imperceptible presence had drifted in with the wind," and all the children heard it, felt it, and were frightened by it (320). "I have as much right as you to be here," he had said to them, reminding him of his outward carelessness yet consistent presence and character (321). Whether he physically appeared wasn't the matter; only that all children in the classroom had envisioned the same image and were terrified by it. It was in all their minds. Twenty-three years later, the thought of So Tsi-fai still haunts the narrator. It brought up questions to her and her classmates that had never been considered before: "Who arbitrates between life and death? Who decides which life is worth preserving… what really happened?" (321).
It may have been the loss of the admired late individual that saddened everyone, or it may have been the guilt that comes along with it. The communities seemed to feel regretful; So Tsi-fai's classmates wondered why he was the one who had to die: "How did it happen that I … turned out to be the… lucky one, while my friend, a peasant's son, was shovelled under a heap and lost forever?" (321). The CAG's shipmates regretted not being able to show their admiration: "We would have followed him into hell" (299). Perhaps they feel that it was partially their fault that they lost their community member; as people often think they could have been the one to take that extra step or lend that hand that may have reversed the outcome of the lost person's life.
As it is and always will be, death changes lives. It shocks societies and brings out the thoughtful side of the individual. So Tsi-fai and the CAG were very different people socially, but their message to their communities was common. Both these people played stronger roles in their communities than it may have been thought at first, and it took the loss of them to really bring to light what they were worth to their world.
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