Sophie's Choice distinctly parallels Styron's own journey as a writer. Stingo's fascination with the death of a youthful friend, Maria Hunt, suggests Styron's own when he wrote about the doomed Peyton Loftis in Lie Down in Darkness (1951). Similarly Stingo has been able to come to New York with the money from the sale of a slave, Artiste, back in Virginia in his family years ago. His fascination with Artiste and the resulting complicity with the system of slavery suggest Styron's own in writing The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967).