A phenomenon that a number of people have noted while in deep depression is the sense of being accompanied by a second self a wraithlike observer who, not sharing the dementia of his double, is able to watch with dispassionate curiosity as his companion struggles against the oncoming disaster, or decides to embrace it. There is a theatrical quality about all this, and during the next several days, as I went about stolidly preparing for extinction, I couldn't shake off a sense of melodrama a melodrama in which I, the victim-to-be of self-murder, was both the solitary actor and lone member of the audience.
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About William Styron
William Styron was a 20th-century American writer. William Clark Styron Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1968 for The Confessions of Nat Turner. Read more on Wikipedia →