When Claude (pronounced "klode") recited his heartfelt epic poem, "Autumn Leaves, Dying Leaves" at the audition for the talent show in the Degrassi High episode "Showtime", he was following in the dark footsteps of such great troubled visionaries as Rimbaud and Baudelaire. Their art, like Claude’s, was a reflection of their troubled lives filtered through a disturbed filter of tears and pain.

Claude must have known that such an obvious plea for attention was inappropriate for a high school talent show. But that wasn’t the point of this display. He wanted to give the world one last chance to finally realize what he already knew. As he stated after he is cut off by the aptly nicknamed "Bronco": "Typical, You’re all a bunch of sheep."

This wasn’t a cry for help, but a manifesto; a mission statement; one last desperate attempt to teach the world a lesson before he ultimately let the weight of life pull him down forever.

We should not mourn or pity or be angered by Claude’s suicide, rather we should celebrate his bravery for taking society’s warped image and reflecting it back on it's blind, complacent faces.

Claude Tanner: Hero.

NEXT TIME: Betrayal + Redemption returns with the sequel to "Archetypes + Human Suffering in: REVENGE OF THE NERDS."