The memoir Darkness Visible by William Styron is about his experience and struggle with depression. William suffered through many tough days where he felt worthless and hated himself. Along with these thoughts, he developed a dependence on other people where he was afraid of losing things or people close to him. He feared being abandoned. The most severe symptom he had was recurring thoughts of suicide which was comorbid with alcohol dependence. William was diagnosed with unipolar depression which we now call major depression. He started having depression at the age of 60 and it was consistent ever since. His depression would be recurrent and episodes usually lasted for several months. It lasted for a long period of time because nothing seemed to help with his depression. When …show more content…
he started getting treatment, he went to a psychiatrist who would prescribe William with different kinds of medications that would help him with his insomnia and antidepressants for his depression but nothing seemed to work for him. The insomnia medication he was prescribed was given to him in overwhelming doses where he was told it was supposed to be taken as casually as over the counter medicine. Plus, whenever he would try new medication for his depression, there would have gaps of time where he wouldn’t be receiving any treatment because the effects of the medication wouldn’t appear until at least a week after him taking the medicine. Eventually, William got tired of taking all these different types of medications with none of them working, so he gave up hope with medication all together. There are a few different etiologies for major depression, but the one that William seemed to express the most was involving social factors.
Social factors are usually linked with stress that causes major depression and can be triggered by several factors such as death or loss of a loved one, lack of social support, interpersonal difficulties or low self-esteem which is what he talked about the most in this memoir. He blatantly expressed that he was dissatisfied with himself and felt worthless. He was stressed enough about his life that he had contemplated suicide multiple times in multiple different ways. With the stress of the social factors model, he developed strong feelings of attachment in which he feared losing people around him and became dependent on them. When William was younger, he lost his mother which is also a major contributing factor to stress that may have led to his eventual onset of depression and is mostly likely the reason why he has such strong attachment and dependence issues. Also, since his father went through the same experiences of depression that William went through while he was just a little boy, he did not have much social support within his family growing
up. Although the social factor model explains why a lot of the symptoms that William had went through occurred, there are some that was not explained. For example, his insomnia and why his medications didn’t work for him cannot be explained by the social factor alone. The medications were supposed to help William cope with his depression that was caused by all the stress he was accumulated throughout his life, but none of them worked for him and he would always relapse, even to the point where he decided that suicide was the only solution to his depression. Later on in his life when he got married and had a wife, he still didn’t recover from his depression despite the fact that he had a wife who cared for him and was patient with him while he was struggling with this mood disorder. Despite the fact that the social factors model explained a lot about William’s symptoms, there is evidence in the book that he talks about that is not a proper explanation for the etiology of his depression. Another model that comes into play that may be able to explain the symptoms showcased by William is the genetics model. He mentions in the book that his father used to be hospitalized in the same situation as he had near the end of the book. He mentions that genetics was indeed a contributing factor to the similar circumstances he was in compared to when his father was hospitalized when he was a kid and that everything came full circle.
War was one of the most difficult and brutal things a society could ever go through. World War II was especially terrible because it affected so many people.World War II was centered in Europe and the people of the European countries felt the effects much more than many of the other countries that were also participating in the world war. In the book All the Light We Cannot See written by Anthony Doerr, the story took place during World War II in Europe, the center stage for the war. This war was one of the most difficult wars because it destroyed homes, displaced thousands, tore families apart, killed off loved ones, and forced people to make tough decisions they had to live with for the rest of their lives. In All The Light We Cannot See,
Upon watching the movie and understanding the concepts of these two theories it becomes apparent that William was in a state of anomie and he used all five of the modes of adaptation in order to adapt to his strain. William’s ability to enter into the four delinquent modes of adaptation, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion, were a result of the breakdown of his social bonds, attachment, involvement, commitment, and belief.
The Holocaust took place during World War II, when Adolf Hitler became the dictator of Germany in 1933. Would your identity change, if you were put through an epidemic. In the first section of the book, Eliezer Wiesel is a twelve year old boy who studies Judaism, but he wants to study Kabbalah, Wiesel described himself as faithful religious man. However, throughout Night, the evolution of Wiesel’s religious beliefs, symbolizes the struggle of the Holocaust.
Sam’s dad committed suicide after struggling with bipolar disorder. Sam didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of his father, which may have given him the upper hand when having to deal with those thoughts. If Sam didn’t have this psychological disorder he wouldn’t have these troubling or confusing symptoms. Dysfunction is the inability to function as expected in social and occupational activities. When Sam was in his depressed state, he found it hard to hold a job.
In this passage, an excerpt from Anthony Doerr’s novel, All the Light We Cannot See, Doerr depicts Werner, an orphan German boy, visiting Frederick’s house, whom he had met in Schulpforta, an elite Nazi academy. Through the experiences Werner has with Frederick’s family in Berlin, Doerr emphasizes Werner’s discomfort towards Frederick’s relationship with his mother to convey the corrupt nature of parental love may harm the child.
Michaelson, Peter. “A Hidden Reason for Suicidal Thoughts”(2013). Why We Suffer. n.pag. Web. 2 Apr. 2014
The ground is frozen, parents sob over their children, stomachs growl, stiff bodies huddle together to stay slightly warm. This was a recurrent scene during World War II. Night is a literary memoir of Elie Wiesel’s tenure in the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel created a character reminiscent of himself with Eliezer. Eliezer experienced cruelty, stress, fear, and inhumanity at a very young age, fifteen. Through this, he struggled to maintain his Jewish faith, survive with his father, and endure the hardships placed on his body and mind.
Each and every one of us sees the world in a different light than each other. These differences in perception are not completely random. Everyone’s perception of the world around us is affected by certain factors. Both the autobiographical memoir, Night, by Elie Wiesel, and the poem, “We grow accustomed to the Dark,” by Emily Dickinson, demonstrate a magnitude of factors affecting how we see the world. Night depicts Wiesel’s journey throughout the Holocaust, while “We grow accustomed to the Dark” exhibits our journeys when encountering new obstacles. Based on the universal concept of “How We See Things,” two factors that affect our perception of the world around us are our upbringings and our experiences when facing new obstacles due to the
According to Durkheim, two types of suicide arise from the different levels social integration. One cause of suicide is extremely low social integration, which is referred to as egoistic suicide. Durkheim argues that this is the case because others give the individual’s life meaning, so without this support from the group the person may feel hopeless (Conley 188). The other type of suicide, altruistic suicide, reflects the opposite situation: when an individual is too socially integrated (Conley 189). This type of suicide occurs when members of a group or community become so totally engrossed by the group tha...
Elie Wiesel was a Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who wrote about his experiences as a prisoner in not just one but three concentration camps. He is a renowned Jewish author, philosopher and humanist. Elie Wiesel made it his life's work to bear witness to the genocide committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. In addition to all this, Elie Wiesel was the world's leading spokesman on the Holocaust, who better to describe the atrocities than someone with firsthand knowledge. Did people think that Elie Wiesel was able to make a difference in the world by writing his novel Night? Let’s see! Elie became the voice of victims and a champion of people and their inherent dignity. Wiesel lost his parents and younger sister
...Unfortunately, Poe wrote about what he could not seem to escape, the continuous death and loss of the people around him. The loneliness and sorrow Poe experienced through out his life was the driving force behind his work. The substance abuse came as a result of the emptiness and sorrow Poe felt, resulting in the self-destruction and eventual end to his own life. In spite of his own tragedies, he remains one of the most treasured and beloved writers' in American history. His haunting poems and stories will be read by numerous generations.
In today’s society violence is becoming more and more tolerated in everyday life. In All the Light We Cannot See and The Goldfinch violence is also a prominent theme that impacts the characters coming of age stories. In both of the stories, there are many types of violence including physical and emotional. In many situations, the physical violence in the books leads to emotional violence and trauma for the characters. Because All the Light We Cannot See is set in World War 2 and The Goldfinch is set in a more contemporary present day setting, they have the same violence but it is portrayed in different types of situations.
• This experience made her very secluded and reserved. She thought a lot about suicide but found comfort in writing. She became an observer rather than a participator in everyday life.
Edgar Allen Poe led a deeply dark and depressing life as he watched every single woman he had ever loved die from Tuberculosis. As Poe watched his mother die at the young age of three and would continue to watch others die during the duration of his life, it is evident from his literary work that he was left psychologically traumatized. While these events in his life undoubtedly caused Poe to sink into a deep depression throughout large portions of his life, because of the time period he lived in it is unclear whether or not he was mentally ill solely because of these events, or if these events just furtherly triggered the psychiatric problems that would have been evident regardless. Considering
Self-esteem is a psychological factor of depression, having a low self-esteem can increase chances of developing depression. Having a low self-esteem means viewing yourself in a negative way, not being appreciative of your appearance. A person with a negative attributional style may blame himself when bad things happen in his life, even when those events were of his his control. Over time, this pattern may contribute to depression (Hazen 83). Some social factors can also play a critical role in the development of depression. Having good relationships with family members and friends can help shield against social