With remarkable candor, Styron shows that the depressed person lacks any belief that circumstances will get better. His close brush with suicide came when he had "reached the phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished, along with the idea of a futurity." By December 1985, Styron was certain that "no remedy will come—not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute." Any "mild relief" he might feel was "only temporary," leading him to the state of hopelessness that "crushes the soul." However, on the eve that Styron prepared for his suicide, he heard a snippet of Brahms, which "pierced my heart like a dagger." Although he had been "numbly unresponsive for months" to any form of pleasure, Styron reacted unexpectedly to the music as