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.
Themes
Destructive Guilt
Sophie’s fatal flaw is to blame herself for situations over which she has no control. Rather than defying the judgment that others place on her, she is prone to internalizing an undeserved sense of shame. At one point, Nathan observes that she has no ego at all (371). Her feelings of guilt do not originate from actions she took during her time at Auschwitz. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent to the reader that Sophie’s father held most of the responsibility for shaping her pliable and submissive temperament. Her habit of self-belittlement becomes so ingrained that Sophie doesn’t even realize that her guilt is misplaced.
Rather than blaming her father for his venomous anti-Semitism, Sophie blames herself for assisting him with his project by typing the manuscript and later distributing his pamphlet. She considers herself a collaborator in his scheme. Sophie reaches the same conclusion about herself when she types up Höss’ correspondence that would result in improved efficiencies at Birkenau. Her collaboration takes a darker turn when she intentionally tries to seduce Höss to gain a transfer for her son. Even though her motives are selfless, she judges herself harshly and says, “I was a filthy collaboratrice, that I done everything that was bad just to save myself” (497). Of course, the betrayal of her daughter to save her son is the sin that Sophie can’t forgive in herself.
Stingo is the most frequent witness to Sophie’s self-abuse, and he notes how often the word “guilt” springs up in her vocabulary. Although Stingo is quick to notice the destructive nature of Sophie’s guilt, there is little he can do to change the situation. Recognizing the problem isn’t the same as overcoming it.
Fatal Choices
The book’s second major theme stems from the first. Because Sophie is haunted by an inappropriate sense of guilt, she seeks to punish herself for her perceived failings. As she accumulates ever more reasons to feel guilty, Sophie’s clouded judgment results in colossally bad choices. A vicious cycle is set in motion because each bad choice adds to the number of mistakes for which Sophie can reproach herself.
Sophie’s guilt is driven to a great extent by the belief that she had a choice to make and chose badly. She fails to recognize that hindsight is 20/20 and that she didn’t unilaterally control the outcome of each of her choices. Sophie blames herself for helping her father with his anti-Semitic pamphlet. Of course, at the time the pamphlet was written, Sophie didn’t have the advantage of knowing about Hitler’s final solution in advance, nor was she aware of her own codependence on her domineering parent.
Later, Sophie reproaches herself for complicity in Höss’ correspondence without considering that failure to comply would have meant certain death for her. Her clumsy attempt to seduce him was simply a ploy to save her son. Both these issues are trivial in comparison to the choice she makes to sacrifice her daughter. Sophie again fails to note that she isn’t a free agent in making this choice. The Nazis are going to kill one of her children either way. Her choice is irrelevant in the grand scheme. Sophie does have one free choice to make by the end of the story. She can choose to end her toxic relationship with Nathan and start a new life elsewhere. Once again, the destructive guilt she carries will make the decision for her. From the very beginning, Sophie has wanted to kill herself to end her cycle of self-loathing. She makes the choice to die.
Defining the Holocaust
Both Stingo and the author struggle with defining the nature of the Holocaust. The principal concern seems to be to prove that it isn’t simply a Jewish phenomenon. At the time of the book’s publication, the author explicitly stated that he wanted to draw attention to the plight of multitudes of other groups that suffered equally at the hands of the Nazis. He chose a Christian Pole as his protagonist to illustrate this principle. Within the novel, Stingo also ponders the question at more than one point. He mentions a reference work that sees the Holocaust as something more than a phenomenon targeted at Jews. Wanda articulates this view when she says, “I despise the idea of suffering being precious. In this war everyone suffers—Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Russians, Czechs, Yugoslavs, all the others. Everyone’s a victim” (518).
At another point, Stingo contemplates the nature of the individuals who perpetrated the atrocities at the concentration camps by examining the character of Höss. Höss is absolutely ordinary. From this fact, Stingo extrapolates the theory that real evil isn’t luridly dramatic or even sadistic. It is boringly workaday—the province of civilian worker bees who unquestioningly carry out the orders of their leaders. The Nazi doctor who decides the fate of Sophie’s children offers a close parallel to Höss. He has so deadened his conscience in the name of duty that only the commission of a great sin can rouse it.
Aside from studying the nature of the Final Solution and its practitioners, Stingo and the author both ask how it could have happened in the first place. No ultimate answer to that question is provided. At the very end of the book, Stingo recalls a quotation: “The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response. The query: ‘At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?’ And the answer: ‘Where was man?’” (560). Neither Stingo nor the author provide a definitive answer.
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