Suicide is a type of death whose significance is linked to certain moral, religious, intellectual, cultural and political constructions that shape the sensibilities of a given era. This article proposes a series of theoretical approaches on the relationships between suicide and the sociocultural construction of pain in modernity. A dialogue is established between the studies of classic and contemporary authors of sociology with the aim of opening a field of reflection on the nonsense that runs through the biographies of contemporary youth. The symbolic value of the school is recovered for the structuring of vital narratives.