Politics of Suicide in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

Abstract

William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice revolves around the death wish of Sophie, its central character. Sophie is a beautiful but fragile Polish Catholic, and is living under the horrible past of ghastly experience of the World War II. Sophie shares a flat with a fiery Jewish intellect, Nathan who abuses her verbally and physically because she is obsessed with the feeling that she deserves the same. Stingo, the narrator and a freelance writer by profession, is drawn into the heart of their passionate and destructive relationship as witness, confidant and supplicant. Ultimately, Stingo arrives at the dark core of Sophie’s past: her memories of pre-war Poland, the concentration camp and the essence of her terrible secret when she was forced to choose between two of her children. Sophie then let die her physically challenged young daughter in exchange of her son and self. This horribly painful decision has engulfed from leading a meaningful life, and the only final solution as ‘self-killing.’