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Darkness Visible (Identities and Issues in Literature)

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The Work

Toward the end of 1985, Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron slowly fell into a deep state of depression. He first made his condition public in 1988, when he published an editorial in The New York Times on the suicide of Auschwitz survivor and noted author Primo Levi. In the editorial, Styron makes the case that Levi’s death does not have moral implications and that depression can lead inexorably to suicide.

Styron also further argues that many people do survive depression, even its most devastating forms. Time, he claims, is the key. After...

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