Sophie's Choice
(Styron; William)
Stingo, a young aspiring author, is fired from his editing job in a publishing company. He moves to New York and befriends his housemates, an eccentric, loving couple. The guy, Nathan, is a drug addict and schizophrenic, who has a sinecure in Pfizer, a big bioscience research company. His girlfriend is Sophie, a Polish Auschwitz survivor. Nathan leads them on a roller coaster lifestyle. High on drugs, he splurges on a shopping spree for fashionable clothes for Sophie, and dinner in a nice romantic restaurant, only to develop paranoid delusions that evening, accusing Sophie of sleeping with another man, and beating her up, then packing up and leaving her. Of course he returns the next morning, apologising and she forgives him.
Stingo learns more and more about Sophie's past as he learns to fall in love with her. He learns about her choice. Sophie was a young mother of two small children when they were called up to be sent to the concentration camps. The general gives Sophie a choice: take one of your children with you. Sophie cannot choose, but she must, or else both will die. She chooses to send her younger daughter to be killed, keeping her son to be sent with her to the concentration camp, reasoning that he, being older, has a better chance of survival. Sophie survives Auschwitz as she is favoured by the Nazi head of the camp for her language and translation skills. However she survives not with hope or strength to live on, for all her family including her husband, parents and children, have died.
Sophie is left with despair and guilt for surviving all her loved ones. Her love for Nathan keeps her going. Eventually she makes another choice. Stingo and Sophie are on the run from Nathan, who has obtained a gun and has threatened to kill both of them. Sophie turns back and the book ends with both Sophie and Nathan in a suicide pact together. The character of Sophie is portrayed very well, we understand why she made the choice to end her life. It is a dark and tragic tale, but a hauntingly good read.
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