William Styron, who wrote Sophie's Choice, sought out other novels to appreciate an author's thematic and stylistic choices. One of the novels which Styron admired was Sound and Fury, by William Faulkner. Styron embraced some of Faulkner's approach to writing and this can be seen by juxtaposing both Sophie's Choice and Sound and Fury. Love and guilt are major topics which both novels share. These emotions are felt by humans everyday, but having too much of both of these elements can prove to be negative for the wellbeing of mankind.
Sophie, the main character in Sophie's Choice, must embrace the loss of her family-her parents, husband, and children-due to the Nazi party in Germany. In the final chapters of the novel, one of Sophie's most excruciating choices is revealed; she makes an emotional decision to select only one of her children to survive with her in the extermination camp, while her daughter Eva was sent to the crematorium. Sophie made many decisions to keep her family alive before they were sent to the camp, such as determining not to aid the rebels' cause, but the guilt she faces after this decision has sculpted her personality and she carried the remorse of her daughter's unfortunate death throughout the rest her life. Sophie expressed her feelings to Stingo about her daughter by saying, “it might even save me from the guilt I have felt over Eva. In some way I know I should feel no badness over something I done like that. I see that it was...beyond my control, but it is still so terrible to wake up these many mornings with a memory of that, having to live with it. When you add it to all the other bad things I done, it makes everything unbearable. Just unbearable (p 538).” Sophie has kept these feelings to herself a...
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...for her, just as Nathan prevented Sophie from being loved by Stingo.
To conclude, love and guilt are emotions that allow humans to change their personality, both negatively and positively. For Sophie and Quentin, guilt has consumed their every thought and the feeling of guilt was unescapable for them. Their only solution was to end their live in hopes of being free from their past. Stingo and Caddy feel different kinds of love-one is from a lover's prospective, the other from a mother's-but both types represent how love is endless, and is unbreakable. Because Styron admired Faulkner’s writing, he was able to capture similar emotions and character chemistry and create a beautifully written novel.
Works Cited
Faulkner, William. The Sound and Fury. Faulkner. New York: Modern Library, 1956. Print.
Styron, William. Sophie's Choice. New York: Random House, 1979. Print.
In researching testimony, I chose to write about Eva Kor’s experience during the Holocaust. Eva and her family were taken to Auschwitz II- Birkenau from a Ceheiu which was a Romania ghetto in the 1940’s. Eva’s story starts out in Port, Romania where she was born and raised with her family before the Holocaust. Eva’s family consisted of her twin sister Miriam,two older sisters Aliz and Edit, and her parents Alexander and Jaffa. The last time Eva saw her father and sisters were when they arrived in Auschwitz after exiting the train. Eva and Miriam were with their mother until a man asked if they were twins.Their mother said yes, after asking if that was a good thing and then they were taken away never to see her again. Once taken away, they were brought to a barrack for twins where they were kept for Mengele to conduct experimentations.
Throughout the novels we have read this semesters, one can makes observation that many of the characters from each novel have gone through fear whether it was due to racial strife or threat to life. We then see the characters go out and find their salvation or in some cases leave their homes before being faced with the consequences they have brought upon themselves.. Finally, most character are then faced with their fate in life where in most situation it is death or freedom. We see these variations first develop by author Richard Wright 's in his novel and movie Native Son. Each variations can been seen within different characters from both Cane and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. The variations are shape within
...pared because of the infidelity and betrayal to their loved ones, and contrasted because of the different emotions that each of the main characters from feeling regretful and very indifferent.
...ing identity to the point where it no longer exists. This identity can be lost through extreme devotion, new experience, and immense tragedy. Relationships with the most meaningful companions impact both main characters, Elie and Frederic. Due to the events they must encounter alongside loved ones, Elie and Frederic change completely, losing the identity that once existed. The most impactful events of any life are those that involve struggle and tragedy. Any tragic event that one encounters can significantly alter the purpose of life forever. Tragic events such as taking away what one may hold dearest, such as a loved one in the cases of Elie and Frederic. This type of loss can create a saddened, purposeless life in all humans.
William Faulkner uses multiple narrators throughout The Sound and the Fury to depict the life of Caddy Compson without telling the story from her point-of-view. Benjy, a mentally disabled 33 year old, Quentin, a troubled and suicidal Harvard student, and Jason, a racist and greedy man, each give their drastically different sides of Caddy’s story to create an incomplete chronicle of her life. Faulkner’s first chapter explores Caddy’s life through the silent narrator Benjy. As a result of Benjy’s inability to talk, much of how he describes the world is through his heightened sensory awareness. Benjy constantly repeats the fact that, which, to Benjy, symbolizes Caddy’s innocence (Faulkner 6). Later in the novel when, Benjy realizes that Caddy has lost the innocence Benjy once idolized and loved (Faulkner 40).
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
In Hawthorne’s theme of guilt, I obviously see that the most evident examples would be Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. This is completely obvious because basically the whole book is about how Hester deals with the guilt in her everyday life. It is obvious in Arthur Dimmesdale because of the part of the book that shows us that he is torturing himself at night. He made the “A” into his chest because he also participated in the sin. He hates himself and views himself as nothing. With Hester, you see that she feels guilty basically every time Pearl is mentioned, and whenever the “A” is mentioned. As for Hawthorne’s theme of Isolation, It is obvious again that Hester is the most clear example of it, but the theme
...and through an unfolding of events display to the reader how their childhoods and families past actions unquestionably, leads to their stance at the end of the novel.
In conclusion Emily Bronte employs the literary devices of repetition and anthesis to make closure for the wild love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff with the union of Hareton and Cathy’s love.With the characters being so similar the reader can't help to tie these sets of doubles together making Catherine’s and Heathcliff's forbidden love acceptable with the peaceful relationship of Cathy’s and Haretons relationship.
If Chantal tells the village, she may be making a choice that leads to the death of another villager. If she does not, the stranger will tell them she withheld the opportunity which will put her at risk of being the chosen victim. In her moment of fear, she says, “For that moment, all of our fears suddenly surface: the fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full or new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything” (Coelho). On the other hand, Sophie is faced with two fatal choices, one being which child is most likely to live and which will surely die. Another choice she must make after a long life of agony after losing her family is the fatal choice to take her own life as she constantly has flashbacks of the guard demanding, “Make a choice, Or I’ll send both of them over there” (Pakula
Relationships are hard enough, even without the horrors of war, rape, and incarceration. Due to rash decisions, a wild imagination, and childlike innocence, Briony Tallis commits an unspeakable crime condemning the fate of lovers Robbie and Cecilia. A precious family heirloom foreshadows a sequence of unfortunate events that unravels between the Tallis family. With each break of the smooth porcelain, a bond is broken and family ties are severed. In the novel, Atonement, author Ian McEwan tells a tragic story of life, love, and loss through the body of a porcelain vase.
Sophie Wender is a young girl who is very caring and brave. Her best friend David states that “She is very brave” (Wyndham 11), which supports her character. Sophie has a deviation that makes her not fit in with the society in the town of Waknuk that she lives in. Having a deviation is greatly frowned upon because it is not of the “God Image” that people expect. A boy named Alan finds out about her deviation and Sophie and her family must run away due to the fear of what could happen if a lot of people find out. Sophie is very scared about the whole situation, and tells her friend David “We’re going away…Mommy said that we would have to go away if anyone ever found out. We nearly did when you saw them” (Wyndham 48). Having to run away because she fears the future shows that she must act un-brave and unlike herself and run away from her problems. Sadly, at only a young age, fear of the unknown changes Sophie to be someone she is not.
Whether a person’s life is something experienced authentically, or factually written down as literature, there are more complexities faced then there are simplicities on a daily basis. This multifariousness causes constant bewilderment and hesitation before any sort of important decision a person must make in his or her life. When it comes to characters of the written words, as soon sensations of ambiguity, uncertainty, and paranoia form, the outlook and actions of these characters are what usually result in regrettable decisions and added anxiety for both that character as well as the reader. Examples of these themes affecting characters in the world of fiction are found in the novel The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and the play Glengarry Glen Ross written by David Mamet. Throughout both of these texts, characters such as Oedipa Maas who allows these emotions to guide her in her journey of self discovery, and Shelly Levene who is so overcome with these emotions that they become his downfall. For both of these characters, these constant emotional themes are what guide their most impulsive actions, which can generally also become regrettable decisions. Even though it is a distinguishing factor of human beings, when these characters are portrayed in print, it somehow seems to affect the reader more, because they are able to see the fictional repercussions, and also know how they could have been avoided.
Sophie was a Polish women and a survivor of Auschwitz, a concentration camp established in Germany during the Holocaust in the early 1940s. In the novel we learn about her through her telling of her experiences, for instance, the murder of her husband and her father. We also come to learn of the dreadful decision she was faced with upon entering the concentration camp, where she was instructed to choose which one of her two children would be allowed to live. She chose her son. Later we learn of her short lived experience as a stenographer for a man by the name of Rudolph Hoss, the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. During her time there, Sophie attempted to seduce Hoss in an attempt to have her son transferred to the Lebensborn program so that he may have been raised as a German child. Sophie's attempt was unsuccessful and she was returned back to t...
Her story, which starts in Nazi Germany, describes the journey of Sophie as she is forced to move from one country to another and in the process, loses many people she loves and moves on to form new relationships; Berlin proves that one can find home anywhere. However, for me, Berlin reminded me that there is a difference between empathy and sympathy. Empathy is the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we had them ourselves; contrastingly, sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune. For most, people find themselves at home when they are surrounded by empathic individuals, those who attempt to understand and relate to their emotions and