A Spatial Study Of Self-construction Crisis In Sophie’s Choice

William Styron’s fifth novel Sophie’s Choice,an American Book Award winner in 1980,is mainly about the life experience of Sophie Zawistowska,a Polish Catholic who survives Auschwitz where she loses both of her children,and the impact of the experience on her following life.The novel does not directly depict the bloody scenes of the concentration camp.Instead,It is through the depiction of various spaces that the atrocity of the Nazis and the disastrous consequences on Sophie are revealed.Under the pressure of various spaces,Sophie is incapable of the construction of self-identity,and finally commits suicide.Mainly with the application of Henri Lefebvre’s space theory,this thesis purports to analyze the crisis of Sophie’s construction of self-identity within various spaces in Sophie’s Choice,so as to reveal that the inhumanity of space as Auschwitz has a devastating impact on Sophie.With Lefebvre’s dialectical approach with triadic elements as theoretical basis,this thesis starts with illustrating the oppression of the social space on Sophie: the patriarchal power produced by home;the extreme political,economic and masculine power produced by the Nazi concentration camp,which shatters the self-identity of Sophie.Then chapter two discusses Sophie’s confinement in body space.It is her father’s training,the discipline of the concentration camp and men’s gaze that make Sophie’s body become a cage for her own imprisonment.As a result,Sophie loses the important attributes of self-identity: self-assurance and independence,being an object under the construction of others.Finally,the thesis analyzes Sophie’s failed self-construction in the mental spaces of religion,music and madness.The frustrated psychological and emotional experience lead to Sophie’s collapse to suicide.The thesis argues that it is significant to analyze the social,body and mental spaces in the novel,which helps to reveal the devastating influence of fascism on humanity,and that the spaces characterized by power and oppression will undermine self-esteem and self-assurance,thus endangering the construction of self-identity.