Sophie's Choice part.2

Sophie's Choice. 2

Author

William Styron

Publisher

Minumsa | published 2008-12-26

Category

Novel

Description

A work that looks upon humanity's sins and pains with an affectionate gaze! The Pulitzer Prize...

Past the middle of the novel, when it was written that within the novel—set against a figure similar to the protagonist 'Sophie'—the heroine 'commits suicide' and the story wraps up, I couldn't hide the feeling that this was some kind of foreshadowing, and this novel too turned out to be nothing but a tragic one that ends with 'suicide.' Throughout my reading I never got the feeling of being 'comfortable and joyful,' and to say the author's intent worked extremely well in plunging me into a slight gloom right to the end would be no exaggeration. The horror of 'Auschwitz' weighed on me to the very end, and Sophie's stress and misery and gloom were spread everywhere throughout my reading of the book. Moreover, 'Stingo,' the narrator of this book, was also a man who had never once properly had sex with the person he wanted, with the person he loved. Since the story is set around 1947, it was a time when the remnants of America's 'slave war' still lingered, when the prosperity 'America' gained after the war was just rising, and when, here and there, Jews were gradually seizing control of 'money.' At the same time, if in the South they openly used Black people as slaves, in the North 'slums' formed by gathering only Black people were being created, and Stingo's 'New York' was no exception.

Sophie's memories of Jan and Eva never properly came out until the end, but as Sophie boarded the train with Jan and Eva heading 'south,' she suddenly remembers the fact that the only city to the south is 'Auschwitz,' and she loses all the joy she had felt at having boarded a somewhat upscale train rather than, as rumor had it, a freight car, and begins to tremble in fear. The army doctor at Auschwitz throws at her, with her son and daughter before her, the cold-blooded words that only one may be saved and one must die, making her ultimately abandon Eva and save Jan, making her commit a wretched sin that a 'Catholic' must not commit, and setting fire to the individual's mental and psychological suffering.

The memory concerning Rudolf Höss was also suffering for her at every moment. She wanted, through Rudolf Höss, to surely save her son. She wanted to save Jan even if it meant letting Höss embrace her and have sex with her. For Jan, the only being from whom she could find joy and draw strength by looking at him around her, she ventures what she judges to be a 'promising' gamble, but in the end she fails. What must be the suffering of a single 'woman' who held hope and experiences that hope being mercilessly shattered before her very eyes? She wanted to save the child even through Lebensborn _{(footnote: It was a kind of racial experiment. The Nazis indiscriminately abducted children of the occupied countries and raised them under German families in an experiment, but even in this experiment, the children who washed out could only be dragged to Birkenau and die in the gas chambers.)}, but failing in the end to save Jan, the frustration she undergoes is beyond words to express. I clearly do not precisely understand the feelings of the 'victims' of the WWII Nazis. I have never once undergone suffering I did not intend (I'd like to say 'death' that follows the natural order is a different matter), nor heard of it secondhand. How could such a person as I understand the suffering of those who survived the postwar period? But I can know it rationally. I can know the fact that they undoubtedly committed acts that should not have been committed, that because of it countless people suffered mentally and physically and died, and that even those who barely survived among them suffered tremendous pain because of the wounds formed at that time.

I was watching her face turn ashen. Muttering something, she groped about as if looking for the whiskey bottle. I said, "Sophie, Sophie, the whiskey is all gone."

Lost in memories of the past and dazed, she didn't seem to be listening to me, and tears began to well up in her eyes. Suddenly I came to understand the meaning of the phrase 'Slavic melancholy.' Like a black shadow falling over a white snow-covered field, sorrow covered her face in an instant. "Wanda, that bitch! Wanda was the cause of all the misfortune. Everything! Josef's death, and my going to Auschwitz, and everything else—it's all because of Wanda!" She began to sob, and tears ran unbecomingly down her cheeks. Not knowing what to do, I was bewildered. Though Eros had departed and was gone, I drew her close and held her. Her face came to rest against my chest. "Oh, damn it, Stingo, I'm so unhappy!" she cried out. "Where is Nathan? And Josef? Where is everyone? Oh, Stingo, I want to die!"

"Shh, Sophie." I said, lightly patting her bare shoulder. "Everything will be all right." (Hardly any chance of that!)

"Hold me, Stingo." she whispered in a despairing tone. "Hold me. I feel lost. Oh, God, I feel lost and wandering! What do I do now? What should I do now? I'm so lonely!"

The wounds Sophie carries are so countless that they are hard to contain in this writing. Still, the one thing I can say is that she cries a great deal, and the reason is that she struggles with various, complexly intertwined negative emotions—guilt and misery, suffering and anguish, and so on. I want to say that surviving a war does not necessarily mean one can rejoice in the 'happiness of having survived.'

Having talked so much about Sophie, I nearly didn't tell the story of 'Stingo,' this book's narrator, but I must. Stingo too is just as pitiable and wounded a person. (Only, since the book's title is 'Sophie's Choice,' I did end up reading with some focus on Sophie. But the more I read, the more this Stingo too is just as pitiable.) Stingo is the author's autobiographical figure. The story about 'Nat Turner' that the author published before writing this book was, after all, William Styron's novel, and the Tidewater story that William publishes last is similar in title and story to what Stingo conceived. The 'racial discrimination' problem hidden within him can be called an 'old-era version' of the racial discrimination the Nazis perpetrated. The only differences are that its intensity did not reach 'massacre' and that its history is older; but if you convert the suffering white people inflicted on Black people into mental suffering, it would probably be similar to the suffering of the massacre the Nazis carried out. His longing for 'sex,' and his longing to truly be with the person he loves, seem about to be fulfilled at the end of the novel but then shatter. After forming a passionate relationship with Sophie, because Sophie returns to Brooklyn and commits a double suicide together with Nathan, the framework of his mind collapses and he ends up losing himself. In the end, without properly attaining what he wanted, with all the ideal hopes he had imagined mercilessly shattered, he too greets the next day's 'sunlight.' It is an ironic and miserable ending.

Among the novels he wrote, there was one with 'Sophie' as its motif. In that novel it was written that the heroine commits suicide at the conclusion, and somehow, seeing that, I wondered whether this was foreshadowing. In reality too, Sophie took sodium cyanide and committed suicide with Nathan in a very beautiful state within mere seconds, so I think it indirectly expresses the author's (Stingo's) intent. Throughout the novel there were very many cases of Stingo narrating his own thoughts (this was so frequent it reminded me of 'Ferdydurke,' which I read before. The difference is that in Ferdydurke he tells his thoughts outright and then, when he finishes, returns to the story within the novel, whereas in Sophie's Choice it happens simultaneously—as if recalling the past). Because of this, I was also able to understand well the bad memories he experienced concerning Mary and Leslie.

When I heard from his older brother 'Larry' the story that Nathan is a braggart and a paranoid schizophrenic, I had expected it to some extent, but I think I can somewhat imagine the shock when it actually came. When I heard from his brother that something had felt off about Nathan's behavior (dilated pupils, veins rising on his neck, losing his composure and raging madly, then suddenly falling asleep—the behavior of a madman), Stingo, who understood the heart of the brother whose heart ached watching Nathan fail to recover at any sanatorium and go mad, and who lamented that he could only worry about him, is surely a good person. The kind of good person who, though wounded, tries to be good to others. It seemed he wouldn't drive others away when they approached with goodness.

Like a man possessed, I'm taking the utmost action over the past four days through 2 books and 2 pieces of writing to make up for not having read Anna Karenina, and I don't know whether it'll go well. My mind is full of the thought that I must borrow Anna Karenina as soon as possible. My heart keeps swinging to extremes, so I'm trying to calm it. I must calm down. In my military life, this is, at any rate, clearly the prime of it. Setting aside the fact that my girlfriend makes up a large portion of the unhappiness factors, the very proof is that I'm doing something through which I can satisfy my creative urge in my own way, and feel considerable happiness through it. Leaving reason and emotion aside, today I should get to sleep.

Related post: Sophie's Choice part.1