Sophie's Choice by William Styron

It is said that a great fiction is always about tragedy. I guess it is right. Sophie's Choice, no doubt, is a great book. Sophie's fate, no doubt, is an unbearable tragedy. I felt very much depressed after finishing reading this book.

The book is quite complicate, both its structure and the social issues that the author has tried to address. There are two social backgrounds. One is Auschwitz during the World War II, and the other is Brooklyn in NY postwar. The book starts with Sophie’s new life in Brooklyn after she was rescued from Auschwitz. Sophie’s experience in Auschwitz was told by herself to her friend in various times and locations, without specific order.

Jews

Jews are not the only people that suffered from the Nazi. The Nazi were not the only people who hated and murdered Jews. Most Polish were anti-Jews even before Hitler started the World War II. Sophie’s father, a university professor, a pure Polish, hated Jews so much that he had come up with theories to prove that Jews should be exterminated. After the Nazi invaded Poland, a lot of Polish not only did not provide helping hands to the Jews, but also voluntarily disclosed where the Jews were hidden to the Nazi, hoping that as long as the Nazi were busy with killing the Jews, they would not hurt the Polish, at least temporarily. Ridiculously, the Nazi did not appreciate either the theories that Sophie’s father had proposed, or the help that Polish people provided. They killed them coldly as they killed the Jews.

One thing that I always have trouble to understand is why so many people dislike/hate the Jews. Somewhere in the book, it was mentioned it partly is because the Jews are good at making money and they want to buy everything with money. Is it so? Is it because the envy of wealth? Is it because the dislike of the attitude with money?

Auschwitz

Haunting with the smell of burning Jews, the camp concentration of Auschwitz is the hell. I have got some pictures of Auschwitz somebody shot in 1980s. See my photo folder. Nevertheless, the worst thing in Auschwitz is not death.  It is the torture of a person’s spirit with being slaved and forced to do things that they would have never done as a normal person.

Sophie was sent to Auschwitz, together with her two kids, a girl and a boy. At prisoners’ arrival, the Nazi doctor, as a procedure, would examine their physical conditions to determine whether they should be exterminated immediately or could be used as a labor first. When the doctor came to Sophie and knew that she was a Polish and a Christian, he told Sophie that she would be kept and because she was not a Jew, she had the privilege to have a choice. The choice is that she had to choose one of her kids, only one, to be kept. It is insane and totally cruel to ask a mother to do that, to send her own child to the evil death. Sophie finally did so and picked her son to be alive, which became a lifelong guilt toward her little girl, with no chance to forget her helpless looking back and crying for Mom. Later, Sophie abandoned her religion, by crying “Fuck God”. Why should a person believe in God when he turned his back onto his people, letting such devil coming to them?

Sophie, due to her ability to speak both Polish and German, was selected as special-talented prisoner to serve for the Commandant of Auschwitz. Sophie was an extremely beautiful and sexy woman. Any man, mentioned in the book, who took an eye on her, either fell in love with her immediately, or wanted to have sex with her. The commandant was in the second group. To save herself and her boy, Sophie had already determined to sacrifice her body. She even “shamelessly” kept flirting with the commandant. Nevertheless, for various reasons, the expected sex did not happen and the commandant determined that Sophie would be sent back to the prison immediately. To catch the last chance to save her boy, Sophie stood on her kneels, hugged the legs of the commandant, and started licking his boots, crying “please let me at least see my boy once”. She was too naïve to believe that the Nazi would do something to please her. She had never seen her boy and she would never know whether he was alive. This is another guilt haunting over Sophie’s heart by disregarding her self-dignity in front of heartless Nazi.

Sophie and Men in Her Life

Sophie and Her Father

Sophie's father was some beast. He was someone that doesn't love anybody but himself. He never gave any of his love to Sophie.  Sophie, in his eyes, was just somebody he could make use of for his own benefit, for example, working for him without paying her. Treating him as some authority in the family, Sophie never had the courage to say no to him, or to request something from him. She did everything that he wanted her to do no matter how much she hated to do, including to write down his father's crazy ideas about exterminating the Jews and to send these messages to other Polishes, to marry somebody hating the Jews as much as her father and treating her like some trash... She dared not ask anything from his father, no matter how trivial it is, if her father did not originate the offer. I remembered one scene so clearly. It was a cold afternoon. Sophie spent the whole afternoon to organize and translate his father's work but was somehow behind the schedule. When finally, Sophie brought the work to her father, all she got from him was dirty words pouring onto her face like some cold water. She wanted a cup of hot tea so much because she was so thirsty and cold. The desire haunted in her mind but never came out of her lips. The relationship between Sophie and her father reminds me something similar to slavery. When her father was shot dead by the Nazi, what Sophie felt was not sadness but some kind of relief. She was freed from at least one controlling, manipulating, and cruel master.

Sophie later said that she hated her father for his hatred towards the Jews. To me, the influence of her father on Sophie is not only the lifelong guilt that she brought up onto herself because of the work that she was forced to do for her father, but her acceptance of the authority of men, and therefore her weakness toward any men. She was always the one who accepts, either love, or rape, or beat. She never had the strength to rebel.

Sophie and Her Husband

Her husband was some loyal follower of her father. The same hatred towards to the Jews, the same attitude of treating Sophie as some trash, and the same irony fate of being shot to death by the Nazi, who he treated as his comrades. Can you believe it that Sophie had been married to such a man for more than 10 years and had two kids with him? Who says that only the Nazi were the killers? Aren’t Sophie’s father and husband also killers? The only difference is that they did not use a gun. They were like some poison killing people from the inside little by little. When Sophie heard about the news that her father and husband were caught by the Nazi, there was some voice deep down from her heart, saying “thank God”.

Sophie and Nathan

To be continued.