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The South Encounters the Holocaust: William Styron's Sophie's Choice
| Article
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11791 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1987 |
6,865 Words |
| Author
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Richard L. Rubenstein
Richard L. Rubenstein is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished
Professor of Religion at Florida State University and
president of the Washington Institute for Values in Public
Policy. He is the coauthor (with John K. Roth) of Approaches
to Auschwitz: The Holocaust and its Legacy |
Of the many literary explorations of the destruction of the Jews of Europe during World War II, none has been written from the singular perspective of William Styron's Sophie's Choice. At first glance, given Styron's Southern Protestant background and his previous writings, his choice of subject matter appears to be surprising if not strange. Educated at Davidson College and Duke University and a World War II Marine, Styron has always expressed experience and sensibility as a Southern writer. This is as true of Lie Down in Darkness, the story of doomed, beautiful Peyton Loftis and her Tidewater Virginia family as it is of The Confessions of Nat Turner, the tale of a slave revolt that took place in 1831 in Southhampton County, near the region of Virginia in which Styron grew up and where, as an adolescent, he became fascinated with Turner. Even Styron's least popular - but by no means least significant - book, Set This House on Fire, expresses his perspective as a Southern writer although it was set in Italy after World War II. His narrator, Peter Leverett, like Styron was a native of Tidewater, Viginia.
Styron's most famous and controversial work is The Confessions of Nat Turner. Undoubtedly, part of the controversy was due to its publication at the height of the civil rights movement of the turbulent sixties. It won the Pulitzer Prize and was received favorably by many whites. It was, however, the object of vehement criticism from black intellectuals. In the midst of their own mid-twentieth century fight for civil rights, blacks saw Nat Turner as a nineteenth century black freedom fighter. Styron portrayed Turner as sexually disturbed and involved with the daughter of the owner of the plantation on which he had worked. (During the revolt, Turner captures and kills the girl.) Although Styron was accused of racism, his actual concern in the novel was the phenomenon of slavery and its continuing legacy. By describing Turner's impotent yearnings to possess the girl, Styron explored the distorting effects of slavery on a gifted but doomed leader. Styron thus added a sexual and a psychoanalytic element to the story of one of the most important antebellum efforts by blacks at revolt and self-liberation.
Thirteen years separate the publication of Sophie's Choice (1979) from the publication of Nat Turner. Styron is a careful writer who takes as long as he feels is necessary to write a book. According to his own account, Styron worked on Sophie's Choice for the better part of a decade. When the book finally appeared, it received mixed reviews, although it was a popular success in both hardcover and paperback editions. Because Styron had once again chosen an emotionally charged subject, it was not surprising that the
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