Sophie's Choice: William Styron Essay

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

Having a “Sophie’s Choice” is a term that has become infamous after the publication of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice in 1979. It is a noun that describes choosing between two difficult decisions that have the same outcome. In the story there is a writer living in New York who meets an odd couple, Sophie Zawistowaska and Nathan Landau. They are lovers, but in the story Sophie’s past in Auschwitz is revealed in greater detail. Through that, it is revealed that “Sophie’s Choice” was the unforgivable

Sophie’s Choice was not an easy book to write and Styron showed that. He took 5 years to write it (Cobbs 3132). Critics reviewed this novel very harshly but even then it paid off. It was his longest novel and most thought it was his most successful. It even surpassed the achievements of his other novel, Nat Turner (Coale “William Styron” 1751). To demonstrate how successful Nat Turner was here are a few facts. It was instantly a best seller and it sold 200,000 copies in the first year of coming out

understood as normal by other members of society. This, combined with his dependency on drugs, lead to his further instability and eventually to his suicide pact with Sophie. Styron presents the deceased couple on the bed in the Pink Palace where Stingo originally met them, tying his story back to the beginning. From this, Styron establishes the dangers of societal pressures, and the consequences of such pressure on those in a vulnerable state. In cases such as Sophie, a Holocaust survivor; and Nathan

William Styron, who wrote Sophie's Choice, sought out other novels to appreciate an author's thematic and stylistic choices. One of the novels which Styron admired was Sound and Fury, by William Faulkner. Styron embraced some of Faulkner's approach to writing and this can be seen by juxtaposing both Sophie's Choice and Sound and Fury. Love and guilt are major topics which both novels share. These emotions are felt by humans everyday, but having too much of both of these elements can prove to be negative

despicable acts of Nazi Germany promotes novelists to write more stories about it. One such book is Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. Critically acclaimed and deemed a classic, his book has never been viewed as trivializing the Holocaust in the manner that concerned Wiesel.

The Commonwealth of the Bahamas is a country known for its crystal blue waters and beaches that make a sun worshiper believe they have died and gone on to another world, a better world. In addition to these deep blue waters and sandy white beaches, the Bahamas is also home to some wonderful authors and writers, including a homegrown writer Dave Gayle, life coach Denika Carothers, short story writer Shawn T. Gardiner, meteorologist Wayne Neely, Bahamian born published writer Alison Albury, romantic

"Reflections on The Tempest" A few summers ago we hosted two Japanese students for 11 days. One afternoon a violent storm came up; we unplugged appliances and from our living room watched the lightning and listened to the loud, almost instantaneous thunder. One of the students, unaccustomed to thunder storms, was terrified; he clapped his hands against his head and appeared ready to dive under the table in spite of our attempts to reassure him. The proud members of a wedding party on their

0 7 -0 3 3 REV: AUGUST 16, 2007 JOHN DEIGHTON VINCENT DESSAIN LEYLA N D PI TT D A N I E L A B E Y E R SD O RF E R ANDERS SJÖMAN Marketing Château Margaux Were a wine to be drunk in paradise, it would be Château Margaux. — William Styron, Sophie’s Choice Brad watched as wine poured from a precarious height into his glass, generating turbulence but no splash. “I must try that,” he thought. A young management consultant, Brad was no stranger to expensive meals, but here he felt separated