Sophie's Choice by William Styron (Book Analysis)

This practical and insightful reading guide offers a complete summary and analysis of Sophie’s Choice by William Styron. It provides a thorough exploration of the novel’s plot, characters and main themes, including the legacy of the Holocaust and slavery in the American South. The clear and concise style makes for easy understanding, providing the perfect opportunity to improve your literary knowledge in no time.

This clear and detailed 54-page reading guide is structured as follows:

• Biography of William Styron
• Presentation of Sophie’s Choice
• Summary of Sophie’s Choice
• Character study
  • Stingo
  • Sophie Zawistowska
  • Nathan Landau
  • Larry Landau
  • Morris Fink
• Analysis of Sophie’s Choice
  • The mature Stingo looks back
  • Slavery and the South
  • Counterpoint

About Sophie’s Choice

Sophie’s Choice centers around the successful writer Stingo, who looks back on the year he was 22 and living in a boarding house in Brooklyn. While he was there, he met Sophie, a Polish Catholic who was in a volatile relationship with the violent Nathan. As he grew closer to the couple, and particularly to Sophie, with whom he fell in love, he learnt about her troubled past: she was a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, and subsequently carried a terrible secret that left her racked with a guilt she could not assuage.

In 1982, Sophie’s Choice was made into a feature film for which Meryl Streep, who played Sophie, won her second Academy Award.

About William Styron

William Styron was an American novelist and essayist who first garnered critical acclaim for his novel Lie Down in Darkness, which he published at the age of 26. He is also known for Sophie’s Choice, which explores the traumatic legacy of the Holocaust, and The Confessions of Nat Turner, a fictionalised account of a 19^th-century slave rebellion for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.