Why did Qu Yuan commit suicide by jumping into the river?

Qu Yuan committed suicide by jumping into the river: he would rather die than surrender.

In the thirty-fifth year of Zhou Nanwang (the first 280 years), in the nineteenth year of Chu and Han Dynasties, Qin General Sima Cuo attacked Chu, and Chu ceded Shang Yong and Hanbei; In the second year, he attacked Chu and took evil spirits, Deng and Xiling.

In the thirty-seventh year of Zhou Nanwang (the first 278 years), Du Ying was captured by Tian Lei, so King Xiang of Chu had to flee with the ruling aristocrat "Yu Bao temporary (Huaiyang County, Henan Province)". In a state of extreme depression and complete despair, Qu Yuan threw himself into the Miluo River on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.

Extended data

Qu Yuan is the first great patriotic poet in the history of China, the founder of China's romantic literature, the founder and representative writer of Songs of the South, who initiated the tradition of "vanilla beauty" and was praised as "the ancestor of Ci Fu" and "the ancestor of China's poetry".

The appearance of Qu Yuan's works indicates that China's poetry has entered a new era from collective singing to individual originality. His main works are Li Sao, Nine Songs, Nine Chapters and Tian Wen. Chu Ci, with Qu Yuan's works as the main body, is one of the sources of China's romantic literature, and it is also called "coquettish" with the Book of Songs, which has a far-reaching influence on later poetry.

In order to realize the great cause of rejuvenating the State of Chu, Qu Yuan actively assisted in the reform to strengthen the country, and insisted on uniting with Qi to resist Qin, making the State of Chu once rich and strong.

The life consciousness embodied in Qu Yuan's works is mainly manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, time flies, beauty's sense of urgency and cold sense of death. Facing the changes of the four seasons in nature, it can arouse people's sense of time and life, and the ancient China literati's expression of the sense of disappearance of beauty is endless from generation to generation.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Qu Yuan

People's Network-Recalling Qu Yuan by the Miluo River