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Sophie's Choice (novel)
Encyclopedia
Sophie's Choice is a novel
by William Styron
published in 1979. It concerns a young American
Southerner
, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish
(but non-Jewish) survivor of the Nazi
concentration camps. The plot ultimately centers around a tragic decision Sophie was forced to make upon entering the concentration camp, a secret revealed near the end of the story.
An immediate bestseller
and the basis of a successful film
, the novel is often considered both Styron's best work and a major novel of the twentieth century. The difficult decision that shapes the character Sophie is sometimes used as an idiom. A Sophie's Choice is a tragic choice between two unbearable options.
Sophie's Choice won the National Book Award
for fiction in 1980.
As the story begins, in the early summer of 1947, Stingo (like Styron, a writer and Duke
graduate) has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill
and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn
, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While he is working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowski, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. Sophie is a beautiful, Polish-Catholic survivor of the concentration camps of World War II, and Nathan is a Jewish-American – and, purportedly, a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a Harvard graduate and a cellular biologist with a pharmaceutical company, it is later revealed that this is a fabrication. Almost no one – including Sophie and Stingo – knows that Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic. However, Sophie is aware that Nathan is self-medicating with drugs, including cocaine
and benzadrine, that he supposedly obtains at Pfizer
, his employer. This means that although he sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, there are times that he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive and delusional.
As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past, of which she has never before spoken. She describes her violently anti-Semitic father, a law professor in Krakow
; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the Nazis for smuggling ham to her mother, who was on her deathbed; and particularly, her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss in an effort to persuade him that her blonde, blue-eyed, German-speaking son, called Jan, should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the Lebensborn
program, in which he would be raised as a German child. She failed in this attempt and, ultimately, never learned of her son's fate. Only at the end of the book do we also learn what became of Sophie's daughter, named Eva.
As Nathan's "outbreaks" become more violent and abusive, Stingo receives a summons from Nathan's brother, Larry. He learns that Nathan is schizophrenic and is not a cellular biologist, although, as Larry says, "he could have been fantastically brilliant at anything he might have tried out … But he never got his mind in order." Nathan's delusions have led him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both.
Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee to a peanut farm in Virginia that Stingo's father has inherited. On the way there, Sophie reveals her deepest, darkest secret: on the night that she arrived at Auschwitz, a sadistic doctor made her choose which of her two children would die immediately by gassing and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, in a heart-rending decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now an alcoholic and deeply depressed, she is clearly willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite the fact that Stingo proposes marriage to her, and despite a shared night that relieves Stingo of his virginity and fulfills many of his sexual fantasies, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she must return to Nathan.
Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide by ingesting sodium cyanide. Stingo is devastated.
novel largely narrated in the first person by an older Stingo, now a successful novelist, but also including Sophie's (frequently revised) memories of her childhood, wartime Warsaw
, and her imprisonment at Auschwitz – presented in both the first and third persons. The narrative is therefore complex, moving back and forth in time between Stingo's description of the summer of 1947 and his relationship with Sophie and Nathan, his own earlier life in Virginia, and Sophie's experiences. In addition, the mature Stingo digresses at length, both on his attitudes as a youth (occasionally including his journal entries, particularly after sexual experiences) as well as on the broader issues involving the American South and the Holocaust.
– both its slave-holding past and the lynching
s of the book's present – and Nazi anti-Semitism. Just as Sophie is left conflicted by her father's attitudes towards Poland's Jews, Stingo analyzes his own culpability derived from his family's slave-holding past, eventually deciding to write a book about Nat Turner
– an obvious parallel to Styron's own controversial novel The Confessions of Nat Turner
.
Similarly, by placing a non-Jewish character at the center of an Auschwitz story, Styron suggests the universality of the suffering under the Third Reich. Though several characters, including Stingo, discuss in detail the fact that the Jewish people suffered far more than other groups, Stingo also describes Hitler's attempts to eliminate the Slavs or turn them into slave labor and makes the case that the Holocaust cannot be understood as an exclusively Jewish tragedy. In contrast, Nathan, whose paranoid condition makes him particularly sensitive about his ethnicity, is the novel's prime spokesman for this exclusivity. His inability to cope with the fact that Sophie, a Polish-Catholic, shared the sufferings of European Jews, while he was prevented, by his mental illness, from even enlisting in the military, causes him to accuse Sophie of complicity in the Holocaust and leads to their mutual destruction.
(ACLU) sent a letter to the school district requesting that the district reverse its actions, the book was reinstated.
. Written and directed by Alan J. Pakula
, the film was nominated for Academy Awards for its screenplay, musical score, cinematography
, costume design, and won for the performance of Meryl Streep
in the title role (Best Actress).
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by William Styron
William Styron
William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
published in 1979. It concerns a young American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Southerner
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(but non-Jewish) survivor of the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
concentration camps. The plot ultimately centers around a tragic decision Sophie was forced to make upon entering the concentration camp, a secret revealed near the end of the story.
An immediate bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
and the basis of a successful film
Sophie's Choice (film)
Sophie's Choice is a 1982 American romantic drama film that tells the story of a Polish immigrant, Sophie, and her tempestuous lover who share a boarding house with a young writer in Brooklyn. The film stars Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Peter MacNicol. Alan J...
, the novel is often considered both Styron's best work and a major novel of the twentieth century. The difficult decision that shapes the character Sophie is sometimes used as an idiom. A Sophie's Choice is a tragic choice between two unbearable options.
Sophie's Choice won the National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
for fiction in 1980.
Plot summary
Sophie's Choice is narrated by Stingo, a writer recalling the summer when he began his first novel.As the story begins, in the early summer of 1947, Stingo (like Styron, a writer and Duke
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
graduate) has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While he is working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowski, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. Sophie is a beautiful, Polish-Catholic survivor of the concentration camps of World War II, and Nathan is a Jewish-American – and, purportedly, a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a Harvard graduate and a cellular biologist with a pharmaceutical company, it is later revealed that this is a fabrication. Almost no one – including Sophie and Stingo – knows that Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic. However, Sophie is aware that Nathan is self-medicating with drugs, including cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
and benzadrine, that he supposedly obtains at Pfizer
Pfizer
Pfizer, Inc. is an American multinational pharmaceutical corporation. The company is based in New York City, New York with its research headquarters in Groton, Connecticut, United States...
, his employer. This means that although he sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, there are times that he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive and delusional.
As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past, of which she has never before spoken. She describes her violently anti-Semitic father, a law professor in Krakow
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the Nazis for smuggling ham to her mother, who was on her deathbed; and particularly, her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of Rudolf Höss, the commander of Auschwitz, where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss in an effort to persuade him that her blonde, blue-eyed, German-speaking son, called Jan, should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the Lebensborn
Lebensborn
Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
program, in which he would be raised as a German child. She failed in this attempt and, ultimately, never learned of her son's fate. Only at the end of the book do we also learn what became of Sophie's daughter, named Eva.
As Nathan's "outbreaks" become more violent and abusive, Stingo receives a summons from Nathan's brother, Larry. He learns that Nathan is schizophrenic and is not a cellular biologist, although, as Larry says, "he could have been fantastically brilliant at anything he might have tried out … But he never got his mind in order." Nathan's delusions have led him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both.
Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee to a peanut farm in Virginia that Stingo's father has inherited. On the way there, Sophie reveals her deepest, darkest secret: on the night that she arrived at Auschwitz, a sadistic doctor made her choose which of her two children would die immediately by gassing and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her seven-year-old daughter, Eva, in a heart-rending decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now an alcoholic and deeply depressed, she is clearly willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite the fact that Stingo proposes marriage to her, and despite a shared night that relieves Stingo of his virginity and fulfills many of his sexual fantasies, Sophie disappears, leaving only a note in which she says that she must return to Nathan.
Upon arriving back in Brooklyn, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide by ingesting sodium cyanide. Stingo is devastated.
Style
Sophie's Choice is a realisticRealism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
novel largely narrated in the first person by an older Stingo, now a successful novelist, but also including Sophie's (frequently revised) memories of her childhood, wartime Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, and her imprisonment at Auschwitz – presented in both the first and third persons. The narrative is therefore complex, moving back and forth in time between Stingo's description of the summer of 1947 and his relationship with Sophie and Nathan, his own earlier life in Virginia, and Sophie's experiences. In addition, the mature Stingo digresses at length, both on his attitudes as a youth (occasionally including his journal entries, particularly after sexual experiences) as well as on the broader issues involving the American South and the Holocaust.
Major themes
One of the important parallels in Sophie's Choice, as Stingo explicitly points out, is between the worst abuses of the American SouthSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
– both its slave-holding past and the lynching
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
s of the book's present – and Nazi anti-Semitism. Just as Sophie is left conflicted by her father's attitudes towards Poland's Jews, Stingo analyzes his own culpability derived from his family's slave-holding past, eventually deciding to write a book about Nat Turner
Nat Turner
Nathaniel "Nat" Turner was an American slave who led a slave rebellion in Virginia on August 21, 1831 that resulted in 60 white deaths and at least 100 black deaths, the largest number of fatalities to occur in one uprising prior to the American Civil War in the southern United States. He gathered...
– an obvious parallel to Styron's own controversial novel The Confessions of Nat Turner
The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)
The Confessions of Nat Turner is a 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by U.S. writer William Styron. Presented as a first-person narrative by historical figure Nat Turner, the novel concerns the slave revolt in Virginia in 1831...
.
Similarly, by placing a non-Jewish character at the center of an Auschwitz story, Styron suggests the universality of the suffering under the Third Reich. Though several characters, including Stingo, discuss in detail the fact that the Jewish people suffered far more than other groups, Stingo also describes Hitler's attempts to eliminate the Slavs or turn them into slave labor and makes the case that the Holocaust cannot be understood as an exclusively Jewish tragedy. In contrast, Nathan, whose paranoid condition makes him particularly sensitive about his ethnicity, is the novel's prime spokesman for this exclusivity. His inability to cope with the fact that Sophie, a Polish-Catholic, shared the sufferings of European Jews, while he was prevented, by his mental illness, from even enlisting in the military, causes him to accuse Sophie of complicity in the Holocaust and leads to their mutual destruction.
Controversy
The book has been banned from many libraries throughout its publication history. As recently as 2002, the book was pulled from the shelves of the La Mirada High School Library in California by the Norwalk-La Mirada High School District because of a parent's complaint about its sexual content. However, a year after students voiced protest and the American Civil Liberties UnionAmerican Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
(ACLU) sent a letter to the school district requesting that the district reverse its actions, the book was reinstated.
Film adaptation
The novel was made into a film of the same name in 19821982 in film
-Events:* March 26 = I Ought to Be in Pictures, starring Walter Matthau, Ann-Margret and Dinah Manoff is released. Manoff would not appear in another movie until 1987's Backfire.* June = PG-rated film E.T...
. Written and directed by Alan J. Pakula
Alan J. Pakula
Alan Jay Pakula was an American film director, writer and producer noted for his contributions to the conspiracy thriller genre.-Career:...
, the film was nominated for Academy Awards for its screenplay, musical score, cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
, costume design, and won for the performance of Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.Streep made her professional stage debut in 1971's The Playboy of Seville, before her screen debut in the television movie The Deadliest Season in 1977. In that same year, she made her film debut with...
in the title role (Best Actress).
See also
- Le Mondes 100 Books of the CenturyLe Monde's 100 Books of the CenturyThe 100 Books of the Century is a grading of the books considered as the hundred best of the 20th century, drawn up in the spring of 1999 through a poll conducted by the French retailer Fnac and the Paris newspaper Le Monde....
External links
- Sophie's Choice Book Notes from Literapedia