[Book] #13. Sophie's Choice by William Styron

This novel reveals violence and craziness of war and unveils cruelty of human. War destroys humanities and forces us to make an unhuman decision.

This story sets in Brooklyn, New York in 1947. 22-year-old Stingo from Southern part of America moved to a little apartment in Brooklyn after got fired from company. There, he met a beautiful Polish woman Sophie, and Jewish Nathan who was talented especially in literature and music among many others. This book shows their friendship, love and wound.

I didn't have any prior information about this book when I started reading it. So after reading the first part of the book, I thought it'd be about love-triangle or love-friendship among the three. But then, there was Nazi concentration camp and Auschwitz. And soon I could see the raw face of human nature (or that crazy times when every country had a war ongoing against every country) that coerced Sophie into making horrible choice. At one time in Korea, the sentence "Marriage is a crazy thing to do" was very famous because of a movie that shared the same title. But after reading this book, it occurred to me: War is a crazy thing to do, indeed!

Image Source: Goodreads

What secrets does that beautiful Sophie harbor from the past? Stingo was fascinated by her beauty and mystery, but soon realized that she was shadowed by apparition of the past: Sophie used to be imprisoned in Nazi concentration camp. What had she gone through? What was that Sophie's Choice which had shaken her soul to the core?

In 1982 a movie "Sophie's Choice" was released based on this novel. Meryl Streep, starring Sophie in this movie, has won Academy Award for Best Actress, Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress, New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress, and National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress. In short, you won't regret watching it.

Image Source: Daum movie. You can see the young Meryl Streep here.

A Few Good Lines from the Book

“Such a language!” she groaned, and in mock pain clutched her brow. “Too many words. I mean just the words for velocite. I mean ‘fast.’ ‘Rapid.’ ‘Quick.’ All the same thing! A scandal!”
“‘Swift,’” I added.
“How about ‘speedy’?” Nathan said.
“‘Hasty,’” I went on.
“And ‘fleet,’” Nathan said, “though that’s a bit fancy.”
“‘Snappy’!” I said.
“Stop it!” Sophie said, laughing. “Too much! Too many words, this English. In French is so simple, you just say ‘vite.’” (p 71)

“People acted very different in the camp, some in a cowardly and selfish way, some bravely and beautifully – there was no rule. No. But such a terrible place was this Auschwitz, Stingo, terrible beyond all belief, that you really could not say that this person should have done a certain thing in a fine or noble fashion, as in the other world. If he or she done a noble thing, then you could admire them like any place else, but the Nazis were murderers and when they were not murdering they turned people into sick animals, so if what the people done was not so noble, or even was like animals, then you have to understand it, hating it maybe but pitying it at the same time, because you knew how easy it was for you to act like an animal too.” (p. 311)

Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.
The query: “At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?”
And the answer: “Where was man?” (p. 560)

Title: Sophie's Choice
Author: William Styron
Note: A movie based on this novel was released. Its title is "Sophie's Choice", starring Meryl Streep as Sophie.

Disclaimer) There's only first part of the storyline in this review to introduce the book. No major spoiler included.

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