Sophie's Choice (novel)

Sophie's Choice  is a novel by the American author William Styron, published by Random House in 1979. The novel is set in New York, where the young Stingo southern writer has found a room and befriends the Jewish Nathan and his girlfriend, the beautiful Polish Sophie, a survivor of Auschwitz. The plot develops through the stormy relationship between Nathan and Sophie to the ' true ' story of Sophies at Auschwitz, with her forced choice for one of her two children when arriving at the camp as climax.

The novel was in 1980 in the Dutch translated by Wim Demir. The book was widely known for the film version in 1982, with Meryl Streep in the title role. ==Content[ Edit] == Sophie's choice is told in the first person by the 22-year-old Stingo. Stingo, an alter ego of Styron, comes from the South of the United States and looks back on the period when he began to write his first novel, with the ambition to become a great writer. At the start of the novel, he has just installed a room rented in a small guest house in Brooklyn. There he became acquainted with the beautiful blonde Polish her Jewish friend Nathan Landau and Sophie Zawistowska, who with pioneering biological research is busy at a pharmaceutical company. Stingo is secretly in love with Sophie.

Nathan and Sophie maintained a complex and extremely turbulent relationship with each other. They feel fiercely attracted to each other, in which Sophie emotionally fully by Nathan depending on seems to be.However, at certain times loses control of himself because of alleged infidelity Nathan completely by Sophie, which he shockingly aggressive can be. Later in the novel explains Nathans brother to Stingo that Nathan has a psychiatric disorder. He turns out to be a long history in establishments to have behind us and try to keep using drugs on the leg. He also appears to be no biologist but a simple job to play in the library, where he read a lot, which explains his enormous erudition . Nathans ' important ' research, to its say qualify for the Nobel Peace Prize, is also fictitious.

A central storyline in the novel is formed by the effusions of Sophie to Stingo about her former life in Poland and eventually her experiences in Auschwitz. They do this especially at times when they are after vehement and emotional scenes once more by Nathan has removed. In the first stories she tells put them in particular her father, a Polish professor, down like a patriotic hero, but he later revealed a anti-Semite, which nevertheless by the nazi's is drained, along with her husband who she describes as a hanged her father. Later she tells of her stay at Auschwitz, where they took a relatively privileged position as typist in the home of camp leader Rudolf Höss. Her son John is in the children's camp and she tries to seduce Höss at some point with the intention to put pressure on him emotionally to Jan for the Lebensbornprogram to sign, which failed miserably. Little by little, more and more of her past unfolds Sophie to Stingo, set them constantly at her earlier descriptions, her own moral concessions and lack of prowess more and more price gives.

The dramatic denouement of the novel takes place after Stingo and Sophie for Nathan, who after a new eruption with a firearm threatened, fleeing to the South. Sophie tells Stingo of the day they arrive in Auschwitz.She appears to have had not only a son but also a daughter, Eva. When selecting a doctor her she says one of her children may keep, the other must to Birkenau, where Sophie know that death is waiting. If she replies that she cannot choose the doctor says that he then sends both children to Birkenau, after which she says she should take but then Eva. ''"She had her bear still with him-and her flute", Sophie decided her story. "All these years I have not heard those words. Also unable to comment. In any language "''.

After Sophie Stingo as first ever on this morally unbearable heavy moment have been told, they fled their hotel room. As Stingo her travels to New York he sees on arrival at their guest house police and ambulances, and he already senses the drama: Sophie and Nathan have committed suicide together in her room, in gala clothes from the thirties, holding hands located on Sophie's bed. ==Themes and appreciation[ Edit] == In Sophie's choice run multiple themes as a thread with the storylines of the novel with it.

An important theme is the failure of the language to be emotionally violent events like for example to describe camp experiences. Styron takes in doing so repeatedly George Steiner, who also deals with this theme in his essay the decline of the word bundle (1967): the inability of humans to express how an experience actually has been. In the look back comes the man always back out on its own reconstruction, distorted by the current context, processing and feelings.

Styron wants with his novel demonstrate how people in extreme situations never substantially change and come to a predictable Act, where "what if ikzelf'-reasoning have no value. Notions of good and evil are constantly changing and are hardly more distinguishable as conceptualizations, not at a victim as Sophie, but also, for example, not at someone as camp commandant Höss.

In this context, draws parallels with the Styron also racial hatred in the South of the United States. In doing so, he makes comparisons between the German people through Nathan and the attitude of the southerners, but eventually also appear to maintain this no. Styron stresses that the Nazis also other groups oppressed: Sophie is non-Jewish, Catholic and her father, who is a member of the intelligentsia was anti-Semite, just as easily removed by the Germans as everyone else.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Exemplary in the novel is also the universal love for music, which is emotionally important moments again and again arises as flight experience. Nathan and Sophie commit suicide to the sound of Beethoven, but also a perpetrator as camp commandant Höss can be extremely emotional and hitting done by classical music.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Styron indicates all these themes a philosophical and psychoanalytic elaboration, sometimes in digressions, interludes, and sometimes even dream statements, which reflected less strongly in the film adaptation. In addition, the book can be seen as a time document, which depicts life in New York shortly after the Second World War. Atmosphere descriptions, such as those of Sophie's pink room, forms an integral part of the novel.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">Sophie's Choice after appearance got rave reviews and was hailed as a masterpiece. In 1980, Styron for his work awarded the National Book Award for Fiction . The novel was also a commercial success and it appeared high in the bestseller lists, notwithstanding (or perhaps partly because of) the frank description of some sexual scenes, which were perceived as controversial especially in the United States.

<p style="margin-top:0.5em;margin-bottom:0.5em;line-height:22.399999618530273px;color:rgb(37,37,37);font-family:sans-serif;">By the great success of the filming a short time later, hit the literary appreciation for the book what in the background, but nowadays the book considered by many to be one of the highlights from the literature of the twentieth century. In 1999, Sophie's choice chosen in the list of 100 best English-language novels by Modern Library and in Le Mondes 100 books of the century.