Sophie's Choice: William Styron
William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice explores the way people moved on with life after the Great Depression, and World War II. The book gives an inside look into the lives of two very different individuals, Sophie, a Polish woman and an Auschwitz survivor, as well as Nathan, a Jewish man who is a paranoid schizophrenic and growing more mentally unstable. The story is told through the eyes of a young writer named Stingo and tells of his interactions with the couple. Grief and depression are a lot more complicated than anyone would like to imagine, and the difficulties victims of those conditions endure need to be dealt with, but in the 1940's people were encouraged to "live the good life" rather than deal
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On top of these disasters she is also sent to a concentration camp. In the final pages of the novel she is given the ultimatum by a Nazi soldier,
You may keep one of your children. The other one will have to go. Which one will you keep? (p. 562)
This decision is possibly the most difficult one a parent would ever have to make, and tormented Sophie for the rest of her short life.
Suppose I had chosen Jan to go . . . to go to the left instead of Eva. Would that have changed anything?" (p. 572)
This question remained unanswered to Sophie, who was never given the opportunity to grieve properly for her loss. Instead, she was cast into a world where she has no choice but to be happy.
One thing that gives her hope for true happiness is Nathan, a man she meets in the library one day. Nathan plays the role of her hero. He is a biologist who has plenty of financial resources. He nurses her back to health and the two become lovers. However, there is one glitch in this wonderful chance meeting. Nathan is a paranoid schizophrenic. He is addicted to the drug Benzedrine Sulfate, and drinks excessively. More than once he is thrown into a rage, caused by a chemical imbalance in his brain, where he hits and screams at Sophie and anyone else near him. He threatens to leave. These stresses add to Sophie's struggles to maintain a normal life. Nathan's problems expand past his effect on Sophie and into his own personal life.
Nathan is presented as a
The narrator of Sophie’s Choice, Stingo, meets a young Polish woman at the Pink Palace in Brooklyn after World War II. She has a dark past due to some horrendous experiences during Nazi occupation in Poland and time in Auschwitz. It is important to take a critical look at her fictitious narrative and deem whether Styron has produced a plausible character. Also, it is key to assess if the stories told by Sophie attribute positively to real accounts of the Holocaust without trivializing the history in order to create a popular
The girls are taken in by an older couple, Jules and Genevieve. While under their care, Rachel becomes severely ill and requires medical care. The doctor is a Nazi, and he realizes that Rachel escaped from the camp. He reports Rachel to the officials, causing them to taker her away from Jules and Genevieve. Although she is helpless and near death, the German guards remove her from the home, “[Sarah] heard... Rachel’s thin scream all the way from the top of the house. Rachel torn from the bed by the Germans. Rachel moaning, too feeble to fight back” (129). Rachel is not only denied the right to be cared for by the doctor, but is also mercilessly dragged away from her deathbed to die in a concentration camp, simply because she is Jewish. Having this label, in the Nazi’s minds, equates to being subhuman.
In William Styron’s book Sophie’s Choice Styron explains the effects of World war 2 on an American, a Polish person and a Jewish person. Sophie, the polish women, who is forced to make a very difficult decision during the war, a choice that, affects her mental state of mind for the rest of her life. Stingo, the American and narrator of the story struggles to find inspiration for his writing career while also discovering his families past. Nathan, the Jewish man who is hopelessly in love with Sophie a holocaust survivor, lashes out in anger and questions her about her past. Sophie’s Choice uses three characters guilt to portray the hardships of World War 2 and the mental instability it has caused.
staying, which is to wake up knowing that she can make it through her abuse with Nathan and
The men and women are separated, and put to work. There is a Commandant who hates them, and they are slowly killed off(The Devil’s Arithmetic) per commandant’s orders. Working daily, Hannah and her camp companions steal things such as scarves to get warmer during the frigid days and gelid nights. Some young men form a plan to escape, but of no avail, even when they change their course of action. Next, they are caught and killed in a merciless manner, as is expected of the horrendous Nazis, who are currently killing more Jews daily than ever, probably due to the fact that the Allies are winning the war. Soon after, Rivka(Hannah’s friend) is chosen to die, to Hannah responds by taking Rivka’s scarf and going in her place to be killed; when she arrives at the chamber, the mysterious power that has transported Hannah to a seemingly dream past grasps Hannah
People can only imagine the terrors that the Jews and other ethnic groups had to go through during the Holocaust in World War II. With Anne Frank’s diary, people can finally put themselves into the scene and captivate all the feelings and sentiments that Anne Frank has poured onto the pages. Anne Frank, her family, and their friends were known for hiding from the German Nazis in the Secret Annex for two years from 1942-1944. Innocent and naive,
Many, many people suffered during the Holocaust war. The Jews in particular were in grave danger. The drama ‘Anne Frank’ outlines so many ways that this historical event caused a shift in the mood of the characters and their relationships. Before the Holocaust, Anne Frank was just an ordinary Jewish girl living in Germany. A German leader named Adolf Hitler developed a plan to destroy the Jews and to rule over the specific places where they lived. What Hitler did to these poor Jews, and the sheer terror they endured at the hands of this Nazi leader is purely unfathomable.
Born in Poland, Henia Weit was the youngest of nine children in her family. She lived in a town by the name of Sambor. Unfortunately, the town was bombarded by German soldiers shortly after Hitler started his reign of terror on the Jews. Henia’s family was forced to do laborious work in a ghetto until they were all deported to a concentration camp. Fortunately for Henia, she was able to escape and never went to the concentration camp herself. Instead, she had to survive for several years alone, with only her sister to turn to.
Life is a precious thing, and it is so precious that some people will undergo severe anguish to hold on to it. During the 1930’s and 1940’s in Germany, people of the Jewish religion were diabolically oppressed and slaughtered, just for their beliefs. Some Jews went to extreme measures to evade capture by the German law enforcement, hoping to hold on to life. Krystyna Chiger was only a small child when her family, along with a group of other desperate Jews, descended into the malignant sewers to avoid the Germans. After living in the abysmal sewers for fourteen months, her group emerged, and when she became an adult, she authored a novel about her time in the sewer. When analyzing the literary elements utilized in her novel, The Girl in the Green Sweater, one can determine how tone and mood, point of view, and conflict convey the message of struggle and survival that was experienced during the Holocaust, and how they help the reader to understand and relate.
Discrimination is now becoming a well-known term around the world; many acknowledge it from the time they came across: sexism, racism, ageism, and the type Anne Frank came across, persecution. Anne Frank was a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl who was hiding from the German Army or the Nazi’s, as they are better recognized back then. Her life story consisted of constantly escaping and being in isolation from those who wanted her dead; it was a difficult time to live in. Anne Frank was attacked because of her differences; Adolf Hitler (leader of the Nazi’s) was killing anyone who was not classified as “pure” or part of the “superior race”.
The Diary of Anne Frank is a remarkably moving book about the short life of a young girl and her family. The Holocaust was a horrible time for Jewish people and Anne and her Jewish family’s lives were completely turned upside down as a result. The war resulted in the deaths of countless people, mostly innocent people. Before the invasion on D-day and the end of the war not too long after, the rest of the world didn’t know the real disaster going on over seas. Anne Frank’s once secret diary has introduced the immense suffering and horror that occurred during the Holocaust.
Several months more pass, and soon Anne begins to have terrible nightmares. She wakes Mr. Dussel very often. She dreams that the Nazis come to take them. In the works of the nightmares, she hurts her mother’s feelings by rejecting her comfort. Anne will only talk to her father about it. It truly
"On July 16 and 17, 1942, 13, 152 Jews were arrested in Paris and the suburbs, deported and assassinated at Auschwitz. In the Vélodrome d' Hiver that once stood on this spot, 1,129 men, 2,916 women, and 4,115 children were packed here in inhuman conditions by the government of the Vichy police, by order of the Nazi occupant. May those who tried to save them be thanked. Passerby, never forget” (De Rosnay 60). In the book Sarah’s Key, it begins with a young girl named Sarah Starzinsky, who is dealing with her family being removed by the French police and put into a camp. Before the family left, Sarah puts her brother into a closet and locks him in to where he will not come out until she comes back. However, Sarah and her family did not realize that they were not
During the devastating time of World War II, a Jewish teenage girl wrote a diary about the gruesome events she witnessed, this diary was named, Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank. Anne Frank lived in Holland and went into hiding when her sister, Margot, got a letter to go to a reception camp. The Franks faced terrifying moments during hiding. They witnessed war outside their window and stayed in the same house without even going outside for about two years.To add on, the Franks had to keep in mind how every day they could be arrested or even die. Sadly Anne and her family are arrested and are sent to Auschwitz, a concentration camp where she would later die. While in hiding, the Franks and the Van Daans, who were also in hiding with them,
| In this option Michelle’s parents will end up having two children in which the newborn had potentially saved the others life.