Thompson is a freelance writer who writes primarily in the education field. In this essay, she explains how Styron creates for readers a vicarious journey into insanity through the style of his memoir.

Traffic snarls as motorists crane their necks toward an automobile accident, movies continually surpass each other in the amount and nature of graphic violence they depict, and real-life crime sells well in books and on television. Why is that so? Psychologists do not agree on the motivation behind such macabre interest. Many individuals cannot explain themselves the force that makes them look at things they would rather not see. But the answer as to why they look is not preeminent. What is important is that they do look. Reading William Styron's slim volume Darkness Visible is the literary equivalent of witnessing an indescribable act of violence. Whether readers devour it in amazement because they...