Sophie makes the ultimate Choice

William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice started out very well for the first two thirds, but by the finale, I was exhausted with all three of the main characters. The ending was somewhat surprising but ultimately felt right for all involved.

Stingo is a young writer from Virginia, which seems like the deep south to his current surroundings in New York in 1947. He is sexually frustrated, having had several close encounters but has never gone “all the way,” and it is always near the forefront of his thoughts. As cash dwindles and he refuses to ask for money from home, he moves into a cheap apartment where he meets Sophie and her beau Nathan.

Sophie is of Polish descent and a recent survivor of the holocaust, and Nathan is a brilliant jewish scientist born and raised in New York. Sophie doesn’t talk much about her past, but we learn about her as we go. We also find before too long that Nathan, while usually kind and loving to Sophie and his friends, will sometimes fill with rage and become the most spiteful, vulgar, abusive, and detestable man anyone has encountered. We do not understand why Sophie stays with him, and Stingo envisions a time when he and Sophie can be together.

Sophie eventually relates her tale to Stingo over time. She was married in Poland with 2 kids when she was sent to a death camp. She only survived because she was fluent in German and other languages, and was able to serve in various tasks to the Nazi officers. Still, she was forced to choose on the first day which child to save and which to send to their death, and was then separated from the living child anyway. She never learned of this child’s ultimate fate. When coming to America, Nathan saved her after she collapsed due to malnutrition and vitamin deficincies. She explains Nathan’s drastic lapses as a reaction to narcotics he takes to help cope with the stress of his job.

Stingo is approached by Nathan’s brother, Larry. Larry confides that Nathan is not a brilliant doctor, it is all a farse and that Nathan in fact has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for most of his life, and is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Larry is concerned with Nathan and Sophie’s impending wedding, since Sophie is unaware of Nathan’s true history. It comes to a head when Nathan once again becomes violent, to the point he threatens to kill Sophie and Stingo, accusing them of having an affair. Stingo and Sophie flee south, but Sophie gives Stingo the dodge and heads back to New York. By the time Stingo comes back up, her and Nathan have killed themselves, dying by cyanide in each other’s arms.

We realize at the end that Sophie could never come to terms with the choices she made regarding her children, as well as other things she refused to do during the war that could have helped the resistance. It is easy to vilify Nathan and root for Stingo, but they are only doing what they know how to do, and when Stingo had a chance to really care for Sophie and keep her safe, he could only think about his own desires for her and dreams for his future. I mostly enjoyed the book, couldn’t put it down for the first half, but the latter part just seemed to bog down. Sophie’s narrative, while I’m sure an attempt to build suspense to its conclusion, dragged out until I just wanted to know how it all ended. A good book, but could have been more.