''Sophie's Choice'' is a 1979 novel by American author William Styron, the author's last novel. It concerns the relationships among three people sharing a boarding house in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

: Stingo, a young aspiring writer from the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both west and east. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

; Jewish scientist Nathan Landau; and the latter's

eponymous An eponym is a noun after which or for which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. Adjectives derived from the word ''eponym'' include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Eponyms are commonly used for time periods, places, innovati ...

lover Sophie, a Polish-Catholic survivor of the German

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

, whom Stingo befriends. ''Sophie's Choice'' won the US

National Book Award for Fiction The National Book Award for Fiction is one of five annual National Book Awards, which recognize outstanding literary work by United States citizens. Since 1987, the awards have been administered and presented by the National Book Foundation, bu ...

in 1980. The novel was the basis of a 1982 film of the same name. It was controversial for the way in which it framed Styron's personal views regarding the

Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

Synopsis

Stingo, a novelist who is recalling the summer when he began his first book, has been fired from his low-level reader's job at the publisher

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American education science company that provides educational content, software, and services for students and educators across various levels—from K-12 to higher education and professional settings. They produce textbooks, ...

and has moved into a cheap boarding house in Brooklyn, where he hopes to devote some months to his writing. While working on his novel, he is drawn into the lives of the lovers Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, fellow boarders at the house, who are involved in an intense and difficult relationship. The beautiful Sophie is Polish,

Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

, and a survivor of the

and

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

s and Nathan is

Jewish-American American Jews (; ) or Jewish Americans are Americans, American citizens who are Jews, Jewish, whether by Jewish culture, culture, ethnicity, or Judaism, religion. According to a 2020 poll conducted by Pew Research, approximately two thirds of Am ...

and purportedly a genius. Although Nathan claims to be a

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

graduate and a cellular biologist with a pharmaceutical company, it is revealed that this story is a fabrication. Almost no one—including Sophie and Stingo—knows that Nathan has

paranoid schizophrenia Schizophrenia () is a mental disorder characterized variously by hallucinations (typically, hearing voices), delusions, disorganized thinking and behavior, and flat or inappropriate affect. Symptoms develop gradually and typically begin ...

and that he is abusing

stimulant Stimulants (also known as central nervous system stimulants, or psychostimulants, or colloquially as uppers) are a class of drugs that increase alertness. They are used for various purposes, such as enhancing attention, motivation, cognition, ...

s. He sometimes behaves quite normally and generously, but there are times when he becomes frighteningly jealous, violent, abusive, and

delusion A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other m ...

al. As the story progresses, Sophie tells Stingo of her past. She describes her violently

antisemitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

father, a law professor in

Kraków , officially the Royal Capital City of Kraków, is the List of cities and towns in Poland, second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city has a population of 804,237 ...

; her unwillingness to help him spread his ideas; her arrest by the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

; and particularly her brief stint as a stenographer-typist in the home of

Rudolf Höss Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss (also Höß, Hoeß, or Hoess; ; 25 November 1901 – 16 April 1947) was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he w ...

, the commander of

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...

, where she was interned. She specifically relates her attempts to seduce Höss to persuade him that her blond, blue-eyed, German-speaking son should be allowed to leave the camp and enter the

Lebensborn ''Lebensborn e.V.'' (literally: "Fount of Life") was a secret, SS-initiated, state-registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "heal ...

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 does the reader learn what became of Sophie's daughter, Eva. Eventually, Nathan's delusions lead him to believe that Stingo is having an affair with Sophie, and he threatens to kill them both. As Sophie and Stingo attempt to flee New York, Sophie reveals her deepest secret: On the night that she arrives at Auschwitz, a camp doctor makes her choose which of her two children will die immediately by gassing and which would continue to live, albeit in the camp. Of her two children, Sophie chose to sacrifice her eight-year-old daughter, Eva, in a decision that has left her in mourning and filled with a guilt that she cannot overcome. By now alcoholic and deeply depressed, Sophie is willing to self-destruct with Nathan, who has already tried to persuade her to commit suicide with him. Despite Stingo proposing marriage and 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 is devastated to discover that Sophie and Nathan have killed themselves by ingesting

sodium cyanide Sodium cyanide is a compound with the formula Na C N and the structure . It is a white, water-soluble solid. Cyanide has a high affinity for metals, which leads to the high toxicity of this salt. Its main application, in gold mining, also expl ...

Themes and inspirations

Themes

Sylvie Mathé notes that Styron's "position" in the writing of this novel was made clear in his contemporary interviews and essays, in the latter case, in particular "Auschwitz", "Hell Reconsidered", and "A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle", and quotes Alvin Rosenfeld's summary of Styron's position, where Rosenfeld states that:Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (1979) "The Holocaust According to William Styron," ''Midstream,'' Vol. 25, No. 10 (December), pp. 43-49. Rosenfeld, summarizing, states, "The drift of these revisionist icviews, all of which culminate in Sophie's Choice, is to take the Holocaust out of Jewish and Christian history and place it within a generalized history of evil." Mathé reinforces Rosenfeld's conclusion with a quote from Styron himself, who noted in his "Hell Reconsidered" essay that "the titanic and sinister forces at work in history and in modern life… threaten all men, not only Jews."Styron, William (1978) "Hell Reconsidered," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,''

982 Year 982 ( CMLXXXII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. Events By place Europe * Summer – Emperor Otto II (the Red) assembles an imperial expeditionary force at Taranto, and proceeds along the gulf coas ...

pp. 105-115, New York, NY, USA: Random House, , , se

accessed 7 November 2015. She goes on to note that Styron's choices to represent these ideas, and to incorporate them so clearly into the narrative of his novel, resulted in polemic and controversy that continued, at least into the early years of the new millennium.

Plot inspiration

''Sophie's Choice'' is said to have been partly based on the author's time in Brooklyn, where he met a refugee from Poland, and he is said to have visited Auschwitz while researching the novel. Alexandra Styron, the author's daughter, published the following account in

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

in 2007: A central element of the novel's plot, the personally catastrophic choice referred to in the title, is said to have been inspired by a story of a Romani woman who was ordered by the Nazis to select which of her children was to be murdered, which Styron attributes to

Hannah Arendt Hannah Arendt (born Johanna Arendt; 14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) was a German and American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theory, political theorists of the twentieth century. Her work ...

's ''

Eichmann in Jerusalem ''Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil'' is a 1963 book by the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of ...

''. However, Ira Nadel claims that the story is found in Arendt's '' The Origins of Totalitarianism.'' In that book, Arendt argues that those who ran the camps perpetrated an "attack on the moral person": Arendt cites

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

' ''Twice a Year'' (1947) for the story, without providing a pinpoint reference.

Reception and controversies

Awards and recognition

''Sophie's Choice'' won the U.S.

in 1980.Weil, Robert (2009) "Sophie's Choice by William Styron, 1980" at ''National Book Association'' iction Blog, August 14 see , accessed 7 November 2015.This was the 1980 award for hardcover general Fiction, se
National Book awards website
The

National Book Awards The National Book Awards (NBA) are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. ...

there given for both hardcover and paperback in most categories from 1980 to 1983 and for multiple fiction categories, especially in 1980. See Much later, in 2002, Styron would receive the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation's Witness to Justice Award.

Critical reception

In his review of the novel in the ''New York Times,'' John Gardner takes it as an example of

Southern Gothic Southern Gothic is an artistic subgenre of Gothic fiction, fiction, Popular music, music, Gothic film, film, theatre, and television that are heavily influenced by Gothic fiction, Gothic elements and the Southern United States, American South. ...

, writing that:

tis a splendidly written, thrilling book, a philosophical novel on the most important subject of the 20th century. If it is not, for me, a hands-down literary masterpiece, the reason is that, in transferring the form of the Southern Gothic to this vastly larger subject, Styron has been unable to get rid of or even noticeably tone down those qualities—some superficial, some deep—in the Southern Gothic that have always made Yankees squirm.

Controversies

At publication

''Sophie's Choice'' generated significant controversy at time of its publication. Sylvie Mathé notes that ''Sophie's Choice'', which she refers to as a "highly controversial novel", appeared in press in the year following the broadcast of the

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

miniseries ''

'' (1978), engendering a period in American culture where "a newly-raised consciousness of the Holocaust was becoming a forefront public issue." Mathé says: (By "limit event" the author is referring to the nature of, and magnitude and violence of acts in, the Holocaust, characteristics of that "event" that challenged the civilizing tendencies of and the foundations of legitimacy for the moral and political fabric that defined its affected communities.Here, paraphrasing Simone Gigliotti, see following. The reference to a "limit event" (synonymous with "limit case" and "limit situation") is to a concept deriving at least from the early 1990s—Saul Friedländer, in introducing his ''Probing the Limits of Representation,'' quotes David Carroll, who refers to the Holocaust as "this limit case of knowledge and feeling". It is a concept that can be understood to mean an event or related circumstance or practice that is "of such magnitude and profound violence" that it "rupture .. otherwise normative foundations of legitimacy and... civilising tendencies that underlie... political and moral community" (the later, oft-cited formulation of Simone Gigliotti). * For Friedländer, see * For Carroll, see * For Gigliotti, see ) The controversy to which Mathé is specifically referring arises from a thematic analysis which—in apparent strong consensus (e.g., see Rosenfeld's 1979 work, "The Holocaust According to William Styron")—has Styron, through the novel, his interviews, and essays: * Acknowledging Jewish suffering during

the Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...

, while attempting to reorient public perception away from Nazi war crimes and

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

s being solely aimed against the Jews and towards also acknowledging the experiences of Slavs, anti-Nazi Christians, political

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

s, and the disabled (hence Sophie's ethnicity and Catholic upbringing); that is, it has him insisting on seeing Auschwitz in particular in more universal terms as "a murderous thrust against 'the entire human family.'" Styron further extends his argument, again with controversy: * Proposing that this more general view of the barbarism of Auschwitz (and in particular the fact that Slavic peoples and Christians were also caught up in its program of forced labour and extermination) disproves the unsupported/irrational/bigoted idea of universal Christian

collective guilt Collective responsibility or collective guilt is the responsibility of organizations, groups and societies. Collective responsibility in the form of collective punishment is often used as a disciplinary measure in closed institutions, e.g., boa ...

and challenges historical arguments blaming all previous Christian anti-Semitism as the real cause of the Holocaust, and * Suggesting that concentration camps, in using slave labour, justifies the comparison of Nazi war crimes (e.g., in the writings of Rubenstein) with the American institution of slavery and allowed the latter to be viewed as the less inhumane institution of the two. Speaking of Styron's views as set forth in the novel and his nonfiction work, Rosenfeld refers to them as "revisionist views" that "culminate in ''Sophie's Choice''" with an aim to "take the Holocaust out of Jewish and Christian history and place it within a generalized history of evil", and it is this specific revisionist thrust that is the substance of the novel's initial and persisting ability to engender controversy.

Other aspects of global controversy

''Sophie's Choice'' was banned by the Goskomizdat agency as part of

censorship in the Soviet Union Censorship in the Soviet Union was pervasive and strictly enforced. Censorship was performed in two main directions: * State secrets were handled by the General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the Press (also known as Glav ...

, and was likewise banned by the censors in the Communist

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

for "its unflinching portrait of Polish anti-Semitism" in the interwar

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

and in the postwar

Soviet Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...

. ''Sophie's Choice'' was banned by censors working for the government of

South Africa under apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

in November 1979, for being a sexually explicit work. It has also been banned in some high schools in the United States. For instance, the book was pulled from the La Mirada High School Library in California by the Norwalk-La Mirada High School District in 2002 because of a parent's complaint about its sexual content. However, a year after students had protested and the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

(ACLU) had sent a letter to the school district requesting that the district reverse its actions, students were again given access to the book in the school library.

Adaptations

Film

The novel was made into a film of the same name in the United States, in 1982. Written and directed by Alan J. Pakula, the film was nominated for

Academy Award The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence ...

s for its screenplay, musical score,

cinematography Cinematography () is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens (optics), lens to focus reflected light from objects into a real image that is transferred to some image sen ...

, and costume design, and

Meryl Streep Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress. Known for her versatility and adept accent work, she has been described as "the best actress of her generation". She has received numerous accolades throughout her career ...

received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance of the title role.

Opera

The British composer Nicholas Maw wrote an opera based on the novel, which was premiered at the

Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orch ...

in London in 2002, and has also been performed in Washington, Berlin and Vienna.Ballantine, Christopher (2010)
"Sophie's Choice, Maw"
in ''

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

'', June 2010, p. 94. Website version accessed 25 April 2015; Gurewitsch, Matthew (2010)
"Maw: Sophie's Choice"
'' Opera News'', August 2010, o
''beyondcriticism''
website, accessed 25 April 2015

Publication history and related works

Selected publication history

* Styron, William (1979
''Sophie's Choice''
New York, NY: Random House, and . Accessed 2 May 2023. * —. (1998) [1979
''Sophie's Choice''
(Modern Library 100 Best Novels Series; reprint, revised), New York, NY: Modern Library, . Accessed 2 May 2023. * —. (2004) [1979
''Sophie's Choice''
(Vintage Classics; reprint), London, England: Vintage, and . Accessed 2 May 2023. * —. (2010) [1979
''Sophie's Choice''
(authorized e-book), New York, NY: Open Road Media, and . Accessed 2 May 2023.

Styron's related works

The following of Styron's works have been collected, per Sylvie Mathé, as relevant to the author's philosophical framework with regard to his constructing the history and characters within his novel. * Styron, William (1974) "Auschwitz," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' 1993

pp. 336–339, New York, NY: Vintage. :* —. (1978) "Hell Reconsidered," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' 1993

pp. 105–115, New York, NY: Vintage. * —. (1997) "A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle: The Making of Sophie's Choice," ''The Sewanee Review'' (Summer), Vol. 105, No. 3, pp. 395–400. * —. (1999) ''Afterword to Sophie's Choice,'' pp. 601–606, New York, NY: Modern Library.

Notes

References

External links

* [Student mini-essays based on stated sources, highlighting such matters as the contemporaneous controversy associated with the novel, including critiques of the author, serving therefore as a point to other sources germane to this article.] {{Authority control 1979 American novels 1979 controversies in the United States American novels adapted into films Book censorship in the Soviet Union Censorship in Poland Censorship in South Africa Novels set in Brooklyn Fiction about schizophrenia National Book Award for Fiction–winning works Novels about the aftermath of the Holocaust Novels about writers Novels by William Styron Random House books Novels about suicide American novels adapted into operas Censored books American philosophical novels Works about Polish-American culture