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Summary: One of my favorites ...
Review: I read this book almost 20 years ago and still it is one of my favorites. Styron is a masterful Southern writer and story-teller, and his language is unrelentingly beautiful and eloquent and ultimately the most descriptive of any writer I've read. His story of Stingo, a young man from the south (based on himself when he first moved to NYC) and of Sophie and Nathan is harrowing yet unforgettable. Please, please read this book! It is not "just about the Holocaust" - it is about the most basic of human experiences and emotions. This book is a classic! I highly recommend it to serious readers.
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Summary: A powerful tragic tale
Review: In "Sophie's Choice," what begins as a sort of fish-out-of-water story, in which a Southern Protestant embeds himself in a tightly-knit New York Jewish community, develops into an emotionally draining tale of a young woman's horrible experiences in a World War II concentration camp. The story is told through the voice of a young man named Stingo, presumably an alter ego of Styron himself, who moves to New York from his native Virginia in 1947 with aspirations of becoming a writer. His professional career begins with an ephemeral job at McGraw-Hill reviewing painfully bad manuscripts. After he (intentionally and humorously) gets himself fired, he can no longer afford to live in Manhattan, so he moves to the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn and gets a room at a boarding house inhabited mostly by Jews. There, while beginning work on a novel, he meets a pair of unlikely lovers: Nathan Landau, who works for a drug company, and his girlfriend Sophie Zawistowska, a recent immigrant and concentration camp survivor. Stingo befriends these two, but he is uneasy about Nathan, who, on the one hand, is highly intelligent, has a wide variety of knowledge and interests, and enthusiastically encourages Stingo's writing career, but on the other hand has a volatile, often violent, personality and relationship with Sophie. Stingo is secretly attracted to Sophie and, in conversations with her, soon learns that she is not Jewish but a Polish Catholic. In fact, one of Nathan's quirks is that he likes to control Sophie by laying a guilt trip on her with the fact that she escaped the fate of so many Jews. She, in turn, has many secrets about her past life that she doesn't want to reveal to Nathan. Throughout the course of the novel, Sophie tells Stingo her life story in gradual installments. Her father, although a vocal anti-Semite, was killed by the Nazis along with her husband because they were university professors. In Warsaw, she was arrested after she fell in with a Polish resistance group and was sent to Auschwitz. Upon arrival there, she was forced to make a "choice" so evil and inhuman, it would be every person's most unimaginable nightmare. It is this choice, one which, ironically, the Jewish prisoners did not have the chance to make, which makes this novel not just another Holocaust story. Sophie and Nathan are one of the most dramatically tragic couples in literature. They seem to share a deathwish that keeps them together, no matter how abusive and destructive their relationship. There is a point in the novel when Stingo and Sophie must leave New York quickly to escape Nathan's potentially murderous actions, but she realizes that she cannot be without him. After living through the Holocaust, she has nothing left to fear; the only way she can redeem the most terrible choice she had to make in her life is to be with this man who promises her nothing but death.
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Summary: A book for avid readers
Review: I knew before I began reading what the final 'choice' Sophie had to make was. I had seen some revealing clips of the film adaptation on the Charlie Rose show during an interview with Meryl Streep. So arriving at the climactic point of Sophie's Auschwitz story, I wasn't surprised, having already anticipated the reason for the title. But what I couldn't anticipate was the breadth of the novel's story, the details of Styron's descriptions, the allure of the three main characters, and the fullness with which I was thrown into the post-war setting and my inability to escape that world after I had finished the book. To say that this is a Holocaust novel would be entirely accurate, but the description would fail to capture the scope of the book. It takes place in New York, and is narrated by a sexually frustrated, aspiring writer from the south named Stingo. He meets Nathan, an American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust who sometimes acts out abusively, and Sophie, a beautiful Polish Auschwitz survivor who slowly reveals her past, and her painful relationship with Nathan, to our narrator who is secretly in love with her. But what keeps me thinking about the novel is not just the story, but how well Styron tells it. He brings in so many vivid images and descriptions that I could not help but feel that the characters were concrete and once existed, and what they went through was real, and the depth of their personalities attracted me in such a way that the pain I felt upon finishing the book had less to do with Sophie's personal tragedy which occurred at Auschwitz, but with the trio's tragedy after the war in New York. Because Styron's story isn't really about the Holocaust, but rather its aftermath. It is so affecting because you see the psychological damage inflicted on Sophie by her experience to the extent that her life afterwards would be so miserable. Her one small source of happiness is Nathan, who is himself suffering, unable to escape both his guilt and his madness. And Stingo, as much as he wants to help the two people he cares about most, is unable to do anything at all.
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Summary: beautiful...amazing...wonderful...
Review: I cannot say enough good things about this book. It amazed me. The writing style was beautiful - it was obvious that William Styron thought long and hard about every word that he wrote. The characters were so compelling. The stories that Styron weaves togeter...Sophie and Nathan's relationship, the concentration camp, Stingo's struggle...it all melds together to become a wonderful story. I recommend it to anyone who wants to be truly captivated by a book.
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Summary: This book should be required reading
Review: Do not think of this book as another Holocaust survivor's tale. I know at every school I've ever been to the syllabus has always contained some work about the Holocaust, and after a while everyone begins to think " Can't we read about something else?" Sophie's Choice is the kind of book I wish I had read in school. It is different from other Holocaust literature I've read, because, unlike most books, it is not about a Jewish survivor. It is about a Polish Catholic woman who was sent to Auschwitz for nonpolitical reasons (I will not reveal anymore in order to keep the suspense in the story). Aside from its Holocaust storyline, the book also gives the most exquisite and accurate portrayal of a young writer struggling to write his first masterpiece that I have ever read. This story is a real thriller, full of tension and mystery. It may sound clichéd, but it is true that once you pick it up you will not be able to put it down. Despite this, the book is not a quick read, because every page is packed with dense, poetic language. Styron must have one of the most vivid and varied vocabularies in modern literature. Like any piece of great writing, this book has the power to move you to tears. While I say that this should be required reading in all schools, I think the reason it is not is because of some beautiful, but very sexual scenes. They are perhaps not for every taste, but they in no way detract from the seriousness of the novel, but rather add to its intensity. This is truly literature at its finest.
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Summary: I didn't know what I was getting into - I promise!
Review: This is a romance novel between Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan. Sophie's choice is between Nathan and Stingo. Wait. That's not it at all. Since I had no idea what the book was about, I didn't know what the primary issue being addressed truly was. Fellow readers, the plot is the aftermath of a Polish woman who survived her residence in a German concentration camp during World War II. She tells her story in America to the narrator, Stingo, who is in love with her. Very interesting and powerful stuff. Not so fast. If this were all the novel was about, it would be pretty straightforward. We also must note Sophie's detrimental relationship with Nathan. "Detrimental" is a euphemism. Can someone please explain to me why Styron felt inclined to have Sophie tortured in both Germany AND America? What message was he trying to ram home? I admit that his scholarship provided irreplaceable insights, images, and facts concerning the occurrences inside and around the camps. But I found the devastating dynamics of Sophie's relationship with Nathan too difficult to swallow. Styron put too much on my plate, and I didn't ask for some of the portions he generously plopped down. In conclusion, if you are reading this book in the summer, try to listen to some cheerful music to raise your spirits. I recommend the Beatles' White Album. If you are reading this in the winter (the better season for such a novel), it should get you through those bitterly cold evenings while you imagine what Sophie goes through. Well Styron, you win. I don't think I'll ever forget this book. And you, my fellow readers, likely will not either.
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Summary: Review on Sophie's Choice
Review: What disturbed me the most about this movie is the relationship between Sophie and Nathan. Sophie's continueing relationship with Nathan makes the audience see how vulnerable she is. She was vulnerable when she met Nathan, coming to America from Europe, after her entire family was murdered. Sophie never really comes to realize the abusive relationship that she is in, and she never really comes to know Nathans mental problem. She needs Nathan though, on some subconsciense level. Nathan is a disturbed charactor, and is very strong. Sophie needs someone strong to fight the evils of her past and to take her out of reality. This is why she does not marry Stingo in the end and chooses to go back to Nathan. The scene in which Sophie is at Auschwitz death camp and is given the fate of choosing one child is very disturbing, and real. It is hard to understand such a subject as the Holocaust. Why people act in such a ways in which they are only obeying orders, and are stripped of there individuality and of there own beliefs. Why a whole country can be hypmatized by one man to commit a nation, and eventually continental wide mass murder, is unbeleivable and inhumane.
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Summary: Tragic story of the aftermath of the holocast
Review: Although I do not approve of some of the graphic sexual content, Sophie's Choice is certtainly one of the most important American novels of the last half of the 20th century. Stingo,a young and naive southerner, arrives at a boarding house in Brooklyn. He befriends Sophie, gentile Polish emigree and survivor of Auschwitz, and Nathan, a Jew who is also apparantly a manic depressive. Sophie and Nathan enjoy a tempestuos love affair. Stingo is drawn to both - Nathan by his charisma and Sopie by her aryan beauty- but especially Sopie with whom he is in love with. During the times of Nathan's emotional breakdowns, Sophie tells Stingo the story of her life. Her drama is extremely depressing. The reader wonders how anyone could survive the mental torture that Sophie is subjected to by the Nazi's. Sophie also confides in Stingo the details of her arrival in the US and her life with Nathan. Ultimately Sophie and Nathan's fate is as tragic as the lives they lived. Styron tells a wonderful story full of passion and compassion. He mixes some humor in to lighten up a truly intense subject matter. His desriptions of the horrors of the Polish Ghetto and the death camps is well researched and well told.
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Summary: If you 'hate' your host country, read this book
Review: I like Sophie's Choice because of a very personal reason: I and Sophie are both political asylee in the United States. Although we are from totally 2 different continents, Sophie problem in her post-exilic life is also my problem. For instance, as much as Sophie thinks that Stingo is 'naive', I also often thinks that American is naive. But, this is indeed a very typical defence mechanism among the asylee; that is to often irrationally glorify and sentimentalize our own culture above the host's. However, the beauty in the novel is: Sophie does this through Nathan's lips. I can imagine Sophie silently agreed with him anytime he made fun of Stingo the cowboy. Somewhere here I read a comment saying that Sophie is sado-masochist. That is plainly wrong. Sophie likes Nathan because of his very unamerican attitude. As a rule, an immigrant can "normally" only go out with another immigrant. And Sophie finds that in Nathan. She finds a friend to romantisize the old and to loathe at the new one. The main theme of this novel, as it is for me, is 'what is a self?'. For asylee, this question is very real because we always need to change our old world view if we want to survive in the new world. It is thus to change our very self. Or, shall we choose alienate ourselves from the hosts? Or, like Sophie, kill ourselves after the unbearable torture of psychic-numbness following the loss of our very identity and self? Sophie tries to define her new self through Nathan; Nathan tries to empower his self through Sophie; and Stingo tries to internationalize his self through the couple. The setting itself is in "New" York. Should I be Derridean, I would have played with that ticklish symbolism and speculated whether it was rationally chosen or not. I would suggest every asylee or every body in exile to read this and to learn how Sophie copes with her post-exilic life. On a broader sense, Sophie and Nathan's suicide is basically a stigma of the modern world that keeps on forcing us to have "multiple selves" and wrongly calls it an achievement. It's very humane to fail when one attempts to redefine and to redecorate his very identity. We can't do that! Because the price of that is: psychic-numbness. The novel has beautifully intensified their love-act so much as to signify their attempt to counterweight the nuissance of psychic-numbness caused by an exilic life. As for the morale, again it is the war that forced Sophie to have that death. Sophie was only a victim who tried to bridge the pre and the post-exilic life as a meaningful wholeness. She failed, because indeed, I think and believe now; we can only have one identity in a live time. And war can only destroy that identity in so many ways.
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Summary: A Unique Slice of Life...
Review: Notwithstanding the ironic comments of the below, self-described "well-read" woman from Stanford, this novel ranks as one of the finest in post-war (that is, WWII) literature. It is quite simply a masterful story told by one of the best and least celebrated writers of the Twentieth Century. One of the most conflicted, naive, beautiful, and tragic characters in the English language, Sophie is a heart-rending, ebullient, but ultimately fated woman living with more grief than most people in today's over-therapized world could even imagine. A novel you won't soon forget.
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