"Sophie's Choice"

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how William Styron's novel "Sophie's Choice" presents an almost unimaginably terrible moral dilemma to the reader. It looks at how in the novel, the character Sophie and her two children are taken to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau during the Nazi purge of the Jews and how in order to be spared, Sophie must choose the life of one of her children over the other. It analyzes the several ways that one can ultimately view Sophie's decision to save Jan, her elder boy, such as using a Kantian, a utilitarian, or a relativist moral perspective. It also evaluates how Sophie's decision, for Styron, ultimately serves as a theological proof, a proof that, by extension, serves to show that Styron believes in an inherent meaning to morality very much in the same manner that Kant does.

From the Paper:

"From the example of the terrible choice that Sophie is forced to make, one might ultimately conclude that Styron, then, accepts a relativist position on morality. Almost anyone would have to reject Kantian values in this application by applying the categorical imperative Sophie would have almost certainly lost both of her children, and how could anyone call a mother immoral for being unwilling to sacrifice both of her children to the "higher cause" of an abstract ethical system? Making such a choice would seem terrible, cruel, and inhuman, so we can say of the Kantian analyzing Sophie's situation that, if he is willing call her unethical, he may be "theoretically" correct, but he has no heart. Utilitarianism seems similarly flawed, and Sophie's good faith efforts to save one of her children probably did not work regardless she is at best uncertain as to her son's survival and doubts of it."

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