Return Of The Exile: Styron's Vision On Life And Death In Sophie's Choice

Many readers feel that Sophie's Choice has essentially guaranteed Styron's reputation as an important American novelist. Its virtues have made this book a classic: its suspending plot, tortuous narration, exquisite characterization, etc..It has been widely acknowledged that the best way to read philosophy is to read it literarily, and one of the best understandings of a piece of literature goes after discovering the traces of its philosophy. This is the purpose to which my thesis is devoted. The two epigraphs at the very beginning of the novel shed light on what the author is going to deal with in his book. The first is taken from Rilke's Duino Elegy, a long poem about life and death, "who'll make its death from grey bread, that grows hard, —or leave it there, within the round mouth, like the choking core of a sweet apple." The second is from Andre Malraux's Lazarus with good and evil as major concerns, "I seek that essential region of the soul where absolute evil confronts brotherhood". Accordingly, the ideas of the two epigraphs dominate the whole novel. They are not two parallels devoid of any relations, however, but share a point of intersection, which has escaped the attention of quite a few critics. In other words, Styron makes his efforts to reveal on the relationship between life and death by illustrating good and evil. This paper starts from the parody of the first three parts of Genesis for the revelation that Styron is against Christianity in terms of the relationship between life and death. Seduction dominates the first three parts: the Serpent seduces Eve with the Forbidden Apple and Eve seduces Adam, while in Sophie's Choice, Adam (Nathan) seduces Eve (Sophie) resulting in death and they together seduce the serpent. For a clear sight of Styron's vision on life and death, the Christian doctrines are probed into in that regard, and a dualism between life and death comes up. Whether in Old Testament or New Testament, life is celebrated over death, and the concept of eternal life has actually already denied death a place. Therefore, either in Heaven or in Hell, life and death can never arrive at their harmony with each other.Styron quotes Rilke to show his agreement with him, and therefore may hold what Rilke holds. Against the dualism between life and death in Christianity, Rilke in his Duino Elegy rebuilds the intimacy of the two. Death to life is as intimate as the core to an apple and "being" remains a combination of life with death.And then three aspects in Sophie's Choice are approached for the proof of Styron's philosophy on life and death—the unity of the two. 1. Eros. An important aspect and evidence of life, Eros is found to be closely knit with death. Life and death are welded within Sophie's and Nathan's love, sexuality and their sadomasochistic relationship.2. Guilt. Stingo's and Sophie's life, gnawed constantly by guilt, is entangled with others' death.3. Evil. The evil of two Nazi characters, the commandant Rudolf Hoss, and Doctor von Niemand, has posed a challenge against the Kantian and Christian traditions and doubling lies at the heart of their resorting to evil. Evil has a life-death dimension in that the process of doubling ensures Hoss's and von Niemand's life with others' death. Christianity responds to social mixture with a frame of oppositions to establish some invisible authority to which all on earth must conform or be cast out. It is in this case that Christians view life and death and Styron manages to bring death, long exiled out of life by Christianity, back to where it belongs—its unity with life. The researcher here has no intention to celebrate one over the other between life and death. It is certain that death is not the end of this study, which aims at the construction of a human consciousness strong enough to accept death at a full being of humanity.