A Tortured Mind: van Gogh's Grapple with Death
Conclusion: Back to Wheatfield with Crows
So van Gogh killed himself at the age of thirty seven, ending a deeply introspective career as a painter. He borrowed a gun from a friend, went out into the fields he painted so often, and fired at his chest. Today, we see mystique. We see the tragedy of a crazed young man who cut off his own ear in a fit of rage and soon took his own life. But to better mold our perceptions, we can now go back to Crows in the Wheatfield, van Gogh’s last painting, and see a different image. Rather than focusing on how the three roads in the painting all end, leaving us with nowhere to go, as Callow is quick to point out, it is better to look to a common theme in Vincent’s artwork: the comfort of the sky. There, instead of seeing Cristin’s “menace-filled images,” (Cristin 10) we can view those “black zigzag crows, the figures of death that come from the far horizon,” (Welsh-Ovcharov 161) as a familiar bridge to the sky. They might present a way out, and it is not the miserable, crazed death normally associated with suicide as a simple end to a wretched existence, and to a life of pain. “I shot myself,” van Gogh told those who came to help him as he stumbled back from the fields. “I only hope I haven’t botched it” (qtd. Callow 271). Troubled though he was, these are not words of a madman; he knew exactly what he was doing. He left his room and set out for the fields that he painted so often, the very same ones we see in Crows in the Wheatfield, searching for a better spot on his journey through life. In so doing, van Gogh proved that he did not seek to end his troubles through an easy submission to death, but rather to hasten his passage into the next stage of life. Perhaps, therefore, we must reexamine our conception of van Gogh as a tormented artist who could not bear the hardships of life. His paintings, then, are no longer mere representations of a tortured mind; they become passionate attempts at a personal catharsis. In search of this comfort, van Gogh ventured into the same wheat fields that have always been seen as chaotic depictions of his madness, and he finally completed his journey to the sky in peace, a passenger on an express train to salvation.