42 pages • 1 hour read
William StyronSophie's Choice
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Stingo begins this chapter from the perspective of a successful author in 1967. His work has won acclaim over the years, but he hasn’t yet told Sophie and Nathan’s story. Because the memory of the summer of 1947 still gnaws at him, he decides that now is the time for him to write a narrative about them.
He begins by exploring Sophie’s relationship with Commandant Höss. She has become valuable to him because of her multilingual abilities and knowledge of shorthand. Sophie recalls working in the attic of the family home, as Höss dictates a letter about ways to curtail the mortality rate of Greek Jews being shipped to Auschwitz. As she works, Sophie realizes her complicity in helping Höss exploit his Jewish charges to maximum effect. She also guiltily formulates a plan to gain his trust so that when he gets transferred out of the camp, she might be allowed to go with him as his secretary.
Stingo talks about the number of lies Sophie’s narrative contains. He doesn’t find out until much later that she sugarcoated her life story for his benefit and Nathan’s. Stingo says, “A fabrication, a wretched lie, another fantasy served up to provide a frail barrier, a hopeless and crumbly line of defense between those she cared for, like myself, and her smothering guilt” (258).
Stingo speculates that Sophie’s all-pervasive sense of guilt stems from the number of times, over the course of her life, that she has helped to cause the destruction of the innocent. Just as she assisted Höss, Sophie also assisted her father in her younger years to create a pamphlet recommending the extermination of the Jews. Her stories about her liberal, loving father were all lies. Stingo says, “She was a grown woman, fully come of age, before she realized that she loathed him past all telling” (258). When her father and husband are both executed, Sophie only pretends to cry.
Chapter 10 Summary
Stingo continues to relate Sophie’s story as it was told to him a few days after Nathan stormed off. Sophie has returned to Yetta’s to collect the rest of her belongings. Still reeling from the loss of Nathan, Sophie seems compelled to confess more episodes from her past. Stingo speculates, “It was this same grief, I sensed, that allowed her to open even wider the gates of her memory in a mighty cathartic cataract” (308).
Sophie picks up the thread of her story during the time she was living in the commandant’s home. The house servants sleep in the basement, which is the only part of the building that remains free of the stench of burning corpses. They receive leftover food from the family’s table, can sleep undisturbed, and use the laundry room to keep their clothing clean. These are all privileges unknown among the labor camp inmates of Auschwitz.
On her way upstairs to Höss’ attic office, Sophie overhears a rumor that the commandant is to be transferred to Berlin immediately. This news sends Sophie into a panic. She must make her case today if she hopes to go with him. During the morning’s work, Höss asks Sophie why she is in the camp. Her entire story comes tumbling out. She tells him about her petty theft of a ham, indicating that such a trivial crime should not have received so harsh a punishment. She then shows Höss the pamphlet her father wrote, which proves she’s a Nazi sympathizer. Even though Höss isn’t moved by her transparent manipulation, he confesses a strong attraction toward her. Despite his amorous impulses, he coldly informs Sophie that she will be transferred back to the labor camp when he leaves.
Sophie then begs Höss to free her son, Jan. This bit of information sends Stingo reeling because Sophie never mentioned that she had a child at all. Stingo says, “I drew in my breath and my limbs grew as weak as reeds. And, dear reader, at least then I knew she was not lying...” (309). Although Höss refuses to release the child, in a rare moment of human feeling, he agrees to let Sophie meet with her son in his office.
Chapters 9-10 Analysis
This segment focuses heavily on the theme of destructive guilt. As Stingo listens to Sophie’s narrative, he becomes aware for the first time that much of the story of her past is fabricated. Stingo correctly concludes that this sugarcoating is applied not only to spare his feelings but to spare hers. Sophie’s debilitating sense of worthlessness becomes apparent in two pivotal relationships: Höss and her father.
Sophie blames herself for helping Höss so effectively with his correspondence. The letters she types for him will enable Nazi leaders to better exploit the prisoners in the labor camp. The letters also outline more efficient ways of killing those consigned to Birkenau. Although Sophie didn’t concoct these atrocious plans, she internalizes all the guilt of the men who did. She also fails to exonerate herself by noting that unwillingness to cooperate would hasten her death in the labor camp. Sophie also blames herself for her transparent attempts to seduce Höss yet fails to recognize that she does this, in part, to save her son’s life.
Sophie is even more guilt-ridden for having helped to produce her father’s anti-Semitic pamphlet. She doesn’t see that she has been conditioned to capitulate to her father’s will without question. Because he has always told her how stupid and useless she is, Sophie has internalized feelings of worthlessness that eventually grow into her all-pervasive sense of guilt. Sophie isn’t even aware that she has been manipulated by a tyrant since her childhood until long after her father’s death. Even after gaining that valuable insight, Sophie still doesn’t divest herself of the self-loathing her father instilled in her as a child.
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By William Styron
