Sophie’s Choice (Themes)

Themes

Evil

This novel explores evil in many forms (racism, sexism, substance abuse, domestic violence, and wartime atrocities). It suggests that oppression is a source of evil — that the state of complete domination achieved by the Third Reich evolved from the institution of slavery. It illustrates how people try to save themselves from the widening vortex of hatred. For example, Sophie thinks she is safe as long as the Germans focus on destroying the Jews. She insists her children are “racially pure,” exploiting Nazi racism in a futile attempt to protect her children. Later, Höss informs Sophie that Poles are “an enemy of the Reich.” He says Poles living in Germany are being “marked with a P — an ominous sign.” In a world of hate and domination, where everyone is potentially at risk, how is one to survive? And if one does survive, how is one to live with the memory?

One evil is connected to another and all people are implicated in the evil perpetrated by some. This connection is insisted upon by Richard L. Rubenstein’s The Cunning of History, from which Styron quotes. Rubenstein states that the Nazi “‘society of total domination,’ evolv[ed] directly from the institution of chattel slavery as it was practiced by the great nations of the West.” This thesis works to erode American self-righteousness in the face of German racism.

Domestic Abuse

Sophie has the symptoms of a battered woman. In a sexual relationship with an abusive partner, she tries to exert power indirectly by manipulating, placating, apologizing, and bargaining. Each time she is beaten up, she apologizes. Each time the partner returns, she assures herself the worst is over. Dealing with random and uncontrollable abuse, she is controlled by her learned helplessness. She confuses who is wrong and who is right. She clings to the abusive relationship because the only “love” she knows is abusive, and she believes the only treatment she deserves is abuse. She learns verbal abuse from her father and her husband; the Nazi doctor and Höss find her sexually attractive and are abusive to her; Nathan Landau is attracted to her Danish beauty and appalled by the fact that she is actually a Pole, which in his sick mind identifies her as an anti-Semite. Addicted to the erotics of violence, Sophie is unable to function in an equitable relationship. The relatively healthy relationship Stingo offers threatens to unhinge her from the abuse she has come to believe she deserves. Battered woman syndrome requires professional intervention and therapy, but even with this kind of support, battered women frequently return to their abusive partners and many are killed by them.

Denial

Denial is an unconscious mechanism which helps people repress unwanted information about themselves or about the world. Americans who focus on Nazi war crimes may be less inclined to ponder the U.S. use of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Similarly, they may feel unconnected to the racist atrocities committed in the American South or the genocide of Native American tribes. Northerners may be appalled by Southern lynching and asleep to the racism that contributes to urban ghettos throughout the United States. So long as people locate evil away from the self, they postpone recognizing their own role in its perpetuation. Stingo’s inheritance is a literal sign that he is the inheritor of his culture. Once people experience what Styron calls “the shock of recognition,” they can begin to feel compassion for the other, a feeling that erodes subject/object distinction and affirms the essential oneness of all humankind.

Topics for Further Study

• Imagine that you have only twenty-four hours to vacate your home, possibly for the last time. You have no idea where you are going or why you are being forced to leave. You have been told you can only take what fits in your backpack. Decide what you will carry with you. Then write an essay explaining your choices and how evaluating them in the light of this hypothetical scenario affected your assessment.
• Read Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical book Night, and compare his memories of Auschwitz with what Sophie says about the concentration camp. Styron includes in Sophie’s Choice an assertion by Wiesel that novels based on the Holocaust “cheapened” the subject because the topic had become “fashionable, guaranteed to gain attention and to achieve instant success.” Write an essay in which you agree or disagree with Wiesel’s position, contrasting his own book with Styron’s novel.
• Research online either Rudolf Höss or Walter Dürrfeld and write a summary of the information you collect. Evaluate Styron’s handling of the character in the novel, determining if the fictional role fits the historical person.
• Interview someone you know who has been an eyewitness to or lived through some historical event — for example, the Civil Rights movement or the antiwar movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War of the early 1990s, or the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Write a summary of the interview and then present the summary to the interviewee. Ask that person to evaluate your summary for its accuracy and to identify topics that have been distorted or omitted. Present to the class your findings regarding how accurate summaries from interviews are.