Vol. 5 No. 2 (2021)
Articles

Absolute Evil and Holocaust Essence in William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice

Published 2021-09-22

Abstract

Sophie’s Choice Published in 1979 is a magnum opus of South American writer William Styron. It was written the same year as the work The ghost writer Philip Roth, Dubin’s Lives by Bernard Malamudhave creative writers as the imperative characters, while the novels by Styron and Roth deal with philosophical problems and the Holocaust’s bad. The Holocaust is formed from two Greek terms - holos which means entire and kaustos refers ‘burnt’. The word is used to apply to mass destruction or massacre which relates to the mass killing of Jews under the German Nazi dictatorship of Hitler during the First World War. The reality that the victim Sophie is not a Jew but a Polish Catholic is what separates Styron’s novel from other Holocaust novels. To his opponents, who attacked him for ‘hitting another’s turf Styron protects himself by asserting an artist’s freedom to portray his desire.

During an interview with Robert K. Morris, Styron defined ‘‘absolute evil’’ as ‘‘the total domination of human beings by others up to the point of extermination’’ (67). Styron feels that this is the essential religion of the Soul where humanity is at its most mysterious. Sophie’s Choice is about how ‘‘innocence, benevolence, brotherhood’’ get destroyed in that essential reopen and about how they are-also renewed in another way. Styron explained in these terms that he wanted not to compose a novel about Jewish experiences in a Nazi death camp, but about Polish Catholic experiences. According to Styron, ‘a vision of a completely Jewish Holocaust was one of the influences that Sophie had on the novel to alter subtly. Through his works Styron hoped to show how absolute evil never vanishes from the universe.