Be careful addressing themes of suicide and/or depression. Along with insanity and the futility of war, it's the most difficult thing to encapsulate - if you get it right, no-one in their right mind would want to read it; if you get it wrong, it could be seen as insensitive or exploitative.
The story has to be read aloud to the class, so there's no avoiding it.
I'm basing the story on why the forest is known as it is. It's following a young father who has been having pessimistic and empty feelings, but he hides it from his family. There was some feeling that was keeping him in the dark- that feeling was him going into depression. (Depression can originate from birth. It can be caused by chemical imbalance. It's a wide range... most people do not really understand the real sense of depression because they don't deal with it themselves. It's a serious issue that can be fatal, hence why I chosed to use the forest. The people that go to the forest are depressed. Their intention with the forest is to die, with majority of them succeeding. I recommend reading
this and get an interesting perspective of the forest from a first hand account.) His place of work is laying off people from work, but it doesn't phase him... because something else was occupying his mind. But what is it? He goes to a book store, and he manages to find a book (The Complete Suicide Manual) that captures his attention. He buys the book, and that was when he realizes the forest's existence... the perfect place to die, according to the book.
The next day, life spiraled downwards for him. The father is one of the few that gets laid off from his job, which is bad enough to hurt a Japanese man's pride. (Japanese people have more pride for their work and their existence compared to the English world. Shame is not an option for them... it is seriously that effecting to them.) That tied in with his depression that he will not admit to having (the Japanese sees getting help for depression as a sign of weakness), the only thing that came into his mind was death. That's when the forest comes into place. He goes home, only to find it empty. He leaves a note apologizing about his departure, and that he did not want to cause any more pain to his family. He then goes to some hardware store and buys a flashlight and long rope. After that, he makes his drive to the forest.
Arriving in the parking lot, he sees two other vehicles on the lot, giving off the aura of it being abandoned; nevertheless, he goes inside the forest, and he sees the forest for what it really is. There is a limiting amount of lighting, the area is quiet... eerily quiet. The only sound he can hear are the sounds of his footsteps. All around that he saw was the green moss scattered around along with the endless amounts of trees. He continued, getting deeper into the forest. *Straight to the point here* He's going to go through a struggle of him actually going ahead with his plan, along with the issue with the supernatural (they actually are prevalent in the forest). I'm going to make it a positive ending rather than a bad ending with him going back to his family, but I want people to understand what some people go through. Society has partly pushed the subject lower on it's awareness scale in favor of materialistic objects; they don't care about understanding themselves or others as human beings.
And I only have a max of 5 pages to do it.
The topic of suicide is already close to 17+ material, but in high school, the period where you are introduced into a variety of topics and ideas, I feel that there needs to be some light shone at this point. There's no point in avoiding it.
And this is a very long post. Thank you if you actually read all of it.
