《苏菲的选择》中的创伤与复原

论文总字数：47560字

摘 要

《苏菲的选择》是美国作家威廉·斯泰隆的代表作之一。自1979年出版以来，这本书成功引起了社会各界的广泛讨论。《苏菲的选择》是一本非常有价值的大屠杀文学，我们若想全面地透彻地了解这段大屠杀历史，阅读这本书是十分必要的。这本著作列入二十世纪百部最佳小说之一，曾获1980年美国国家图书奖。《苏菲的选择》是美国大学生的必读书目之一。因为他们不仅可以通过这本书更好地了解大屠杀历史，更是因为这本著作是西方小说史上的重要里程碑。

《苏菲的选择》一书中涵盖了很多主题，并且都被国内外学者热烈讨论并进行深度研究。有些评论家对父权社会，女权主义，种族压迫以及宗教信仰方面进行了评论。还有一些专家研究其挣扎求生，不公平现象以及斯泰隆独特的叙述手法。有些评论家说威廉·斯泰隆是想要通过这本书为大家呈现出一个充满邪恶的世界。正是因为恶魔的无处不在，苏菲才会最终再也承受不住精神危机从而走上自杀之路。然而，目前将研究目光集中于苏菲的创伤与复原方面的研究还是很少。所以本论文将会针对这一研究空白，利用创伤与复原理论研究苏菲的创伤事件以及她的复原历程。

本论文基于朱迪思·赫尔曼的创伤与复原理论展开研究。在赫尔曼的著作《创伤与复原》中，她提出创伤者想要得到复原要经历三个阶段， 首先是重建安全感，其次是重忆伤痛，最后是重建联系。论文将会以这三个阶段为出发点，依次研究每个阶段的苏菲所经历的创伤以及她的复原历程。

最终论文得出的结论是，正如威廉·斯泰隆想要通过这本小说所诠释的一样，这个世界上确实是存在恶魔的，甚至有时候邪恶是无处不在的。我们不能避免经历一些痛苦的事情，也不能避免有时候我们会感到很无助很无奈，但我们应该学会通过正确的方法得到复原。苏菲的悲剧---选择死亡作为自己的复原终点，看似是可以避免的，然而这个悲剧结局是早已注定的。 大屠杀的邪恶，它带给幸存者的悲伤与痛苦是永不能抹去的，这道伤疤是永远不会被抚平的。

关键词： 《苏菲的选择》； 威廉·斯泰隆； 创伤； 复原

Abstract

Sophie’s Choice is one of the American writer William Styron’s representative works. Since its publication in 1979, it has aroused wide discussion among the public. It is a necessary reading if we want to know this part of history comprehensively. It won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 1980. For the American college students, they are required to read Sophie’s Choice not only because they need to learn the Holocaust history, but also because this novel is a milestone work in history of western fiction.

Sophie’s Choice contains several themes which have been deeply discussed and researched by scholar home and abroad. Some critics make comments on patriarchal society, feminism, racial oppression ahd religion. A few critics also explore the struggle to survive, injustice and the narrative method of this story. Some critics said that William Styron wanted to present a world of evil through this story. Because of the existence of evil, Sophie finally could not bear any more and suicide. However, there are few researches focusing on the trauma and recovery which Sophie experienced. So this thesis is aimed to fill this gap and explore the traumatized events of Sophie with trauma and recovery theory.

The thesis utilizes trauma and recovery theory of Judith Herman to analyze Sophie’s trauma and her recovery process. In Herman’s famous work Trauma and Recovery, she put forward three periods of trauma recovery --- reestablish sense of security, recall the pain and reconstruct sense of connection. This thesis takes these three periods as points of departure to discuss Sophie’s sorrow and her struggle to be cured.

Finally, the thesis comes to a conclusion that just as what William Styron wanted to interpret by the novel, evil does exist in this world and sometimes it even exists everywhere. We cannot avoid experiencing something painful and being helpless, but we should learn to get recovery in a right way. It seems that Sophie’s tragedy--- chose death as her termination could be prevented if she cured herself in a more calm way. However, this tragic ending is doomed because the Holocaust was so evil that the pain and sorrow which the survivor bear are so heavy that they can never be erased.

Keywords: Sophie’s Choice: William Styron; trauma; recovery

Contents

Acknowledgements I

摘要 II

Abstract III

Introduction 1

Chapter One Reestablishment of security 5

1.1Sohpie's Autonomy 5

1.2 Reliance on Nathan 7

Chapter Two Recalling of Trauma 10

2.1 Evasion from Her Sufferings 10

2.2 Distortion of Facts 10

Chapter Three Reconstruction of connection 12

3.1Sophie's Attempt on Integration 12

3.2Engaging in Group 17

Conclusion 20

Works Cited 23

Introduction

William Styron is a world-famous American writer after the Second World War. As one of the leading writers of American Southern Literature, he didn’t confine his works to the typical themes of southern style, but stretched to various fields. In his fictions, harrowing events and unsettled moral questions are concerned. Sophie’s Choice, a novel published in 1979, can be seen as one of his representative works and which let him harvest reputation in his writing career. The novel tells a story of a Polish girl named Sophie who survived Auschwitz, her Jewish lover Nathan and a Southern writer named Stingo. Stingo, the narrator of the whole story, witnessed the trauma and pain of the girl he loved---Sophie, and finally saw she went toward her death destination. The novel won the US National Book Award for Fiction in 1980, and as a classic Holocaust literature, it is a landmark work in Western Fiction.

Sophie’s Choice became a success when it came out, and just as the success always comes along with criticism, it also evoked a burden of controversy, which is partly because of Styron’s decision to non-Jewish victim of the Holocaust and partly because of explicit sexuality and profanity. However, the work undoubtedly received praise from the writing and critic fields. Robert Towers wrote his comment on the novel in The New York Review of Books---“In approaching the Holocaust from the Polish side, William Styron has undoubtedly opened up a whole new area of historical awareness and imagined experience.” Definitely, Styron was so brave and ambitious that he explored the disastrous world with a totally new fissure, through the experience of a Polish girl. Rosenfeld also said in his work The Holocaust According to William Styron that Styron reoriented views of the Holocaust away from its being only aimed against the Jews, and let us notice its encompassing Slave and other Christians. Most critics were around the Holocaust and human evil. Besides, moral theme was also discussed widely. Barbour D, John remarks that”…with a fundamental Christian question: how to insist on one’s belief when one faces an evil.” The music in the story was explored as an important symbol that Janet M, Stanford commented “William Styron utilized the technique that he examined the potential of human existence and the quality of two extremes on a same human being.”

Contrast with the discussions on this novel abroad, the critics among Chinese mainly focus on the themes it includes. Fan Xin published an article named Who killed the heroine? ---The Thematic Study of Sophie’s Choice. She treated the death of Sophie as the freedom that she escaped from the guilt in her heart. Zeng Chuanfang explored the tragedy of the Holocaust in her article Explain and Warn. Besides, there also have other articles about narratology technique, such as Zhang Yujuan’s The Humanistic Value of Narrative Form---Analysis of the Narrative Structure in Sophie’s Choice. In recent years, psychoanalysis has gained attention among the public. Consequently, people started analyzing the suffering and pain of Sophie. Trauma and recovery has been discussed by several scholars. And according to my research, there are about three essays written on the theme of trauma, but one of them is merely based on the trauma theme, and other two discuss the trauma of Sophie and Stingo. Therefore, it still has space to explore the trauma suffering and recovery process of Sophie, since her experience and her death ending warn us a lot that pain is everywhere and choosing a right way to recover is necessary.

This essay will be written based on the trauma and recovery theory of Judith Herman. But first, what is trauma? As to Cathy Caruth, “Trauma is an irresistible experience of calamity or disaster or catastrophic events, and the pain showed up delayed. The event uncontrollably appears in traumatized people’s mind again and again.” (Caruth Memory 92)The trauma may be come from the events people experienced in the past days; however, the pain of it will torture the sufferer in the rest of his or her life. Judith Herman researched the method for sufferer to recover from the trauma in her book Trauma and Recovery. An important process of recovery has been mainly divided into three parts according to her perspective, which are reestablishing sense of security, recalling the pain and reconstructing sense of connection. “Recovery is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.” (Herman 213)Therefore, relationship is a necessary part in the process of recovery. In Sophie’s Choice, Sophie attempted to reconstruct sense of connection with others. The friendship of Stingo, Nathan and her provided her a group to rely on and to relieve her deep-hearted sorrow. Also, the job she found--- being an assistant of doctor Blackstock, also helped her get access to the public and contributed to sense of connection with whole society.

The body of the dissertation will be divided into three parts. The first part will be stand on the first part of the recovery process---reestablish sense of security. After the slavery of Holocaust, Sophie regained her autonomy. She could eat delicious food, she could do things she wanted to do, she could listen graceful music, she could own a love relationship with a man, etc. This kind of autonomy helped her to gain a sense of safety to some extent. Moreover, Nathan’s love let her feel safe largely. This is also why Sophie relied on Nathan so much. The second part will be mainly rooted on recalling the pain. From the story, we can see that Sophie chose Stingo as her pain listener and she told him the nightmare she had experienced and the suffering she had borne. However, some of the memories were avoided deliberately and most of the truths were distorted. Although Sophie was going through the second period of recovery, her refusal to face up to the pain is one of the reason for her death. The third body part will be based on Sophie’s reconstruct on sense of connection. On the one hand, she tried to recomplete herself. The life before just broken into pieces by Holocaust, and she had to face totally new environment and new people. She lost faith and spurned on Catholics. If one cannot re-find and recognize himself or herself, he or she would never be really connected to the rest society. So Sophie attempted to reconstruct her new life and adapted to it. On the other hand, Sophie engaged in groups to reinforce the connection. The friendship of Sophie, Nathan and Stingo made a three-people group which provided Sophie reliance, support and hope. Otherwise, Sophie joined in work field also let her got in touch with more people and understand the usual existence of evil. Finally, the thesis will make the conclusion that Holocaust is so cruel that the suffering it brings to survivors is disastrous and cannot be cured. What is more important is that evil is just there and pain is inevitable. Everyone in this world has to experience bad things and tastes bitterness. So, learn to digest the bad past and recover in a right way is necessary. Trauma is everywhere somehow, but it doesn’t mean a disaster would be the only ending.

Chapter One Reestablishment of Security

Sophie was desperate to look for secure guarantee after she survived from the catastrophe. According to Herman’s tragedy and recovery theory, reestablishing sense of security is the first and also the basic process of a trauma survivor’s recovery. Regaining autonomy contributes the most to the sense of security, because autonomy is the prerequisite for survivors to set up their normal life. Otherwise, for Sophie, finding someone she could rely on is the most efficient way to help her establish security. She was isolated from the society for too long time that she was scared to get touch with other people. Nathan’s appearance and love just like a life-saving straw that it gives Sophie hope and courage.

1.1 Sophie’s Autonomy

Holding autonomy in one’s hand is the basis of a normal life. “The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection and care, but not cure.” (Herman 105)Herman puts forward that the prime threat proposed by trauma is that it takes a sense of power and control away from the victim. Restoring the sense of autonomy can help survivor to reestablish safety. Sophie, the heroine of the novel, she was slaved in Auschwitz, the truth which obvious indicates that she lost freedom and basic human rights. Besides, another truth that cannot be ignored is the patriarchy society which set up by her father during her childhood, because it also caused paralysis on Sophie that she didn’t even be aware that she was totally controlled by her father. After Sophie relieved from these bonds, she gradually regained her autonomy and she attempted to be cured from those nightmares.

At the beginning, when Sophie talked about her father Professor Zbigniew Bieganski with Stingo, she said that the man was kind and general, she said “he is a pacifist…he tried to save Jews even risked his own life in the violent Russian programs.”(Styron 291) However, it was a total lie. In fact, he was an advocator of the National Democratic Party, and he held the percept of anti-Semitism to advocate slaughtering Jews violently. Sophie lied to Stingo because that in her heart the attitude toward father is ambivalent. On the one hand, father’s tenderness warmed her childhood memory. “He went for a walk with me shoulder to shoulder, and lifted his hands to fondle my yellow hair.” (Styron 308) On the other hand, she lived under the domination of her father. The most obvious evidence is that her father prevented her love for music. In the novel, Sophie told Stingo that when she was a teenager her father took her to visit Princess Czartoryska, who had a phonograph at her house and often played wonderful music. Sophie was enchanted by the melody but she was too nervous to ask the lady replay the music when it ended. Because she knew her father would be angry and gave her some punishment if she did so. Actually, this awful scene not only reappeared when Sophie memories her father with Stingo, but also appeared as a nightmare in the subsequent story. After Stingo showed his love toward Sophie, Nathan was irritated and threatened them that he would kill them. So Stingo took Sophie to run away from Brooklyn and went to the South. Sophie began to dream of the bitterness on the way. This is her nightmare:

The dream comes to me again and again that I saw the princess wore her noble gown and went to the phonograph. She turned to us and asked ‘Do you want to hear another piece of music?’ At that time I was so excited and I really wanted to shout out ‘yes’. However, my father stood up and shot a glance at me. He said to Czartoryska “Oh, you do not need to play the melody for that girl. She cannot appreciate it. She does not have that kind of intelligence. Suddenly, I was woken and I felt painful….(Styron 328)

This verified the perspective from Sigmund Freud on psychology. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle---Group Psychology, he proposed that “The traumatized survivors are often dragged back to their nightmare unconsciously. They would experience the painful situation again.” (Freud 78)

The death of Sophie’s father could indicate she regained autonomy to some extent. Firstly, she could play the music which she liked through the phonograph Nathan bought to her. There are numerous depictions are about music and phonograph in the novel. Actually, besides they provide contrast with the previous life Sophie lived, they also include other implied meanings. Janet M, Stanford put forward that “through the use of music, Styron is making an objective statement regarding the potential for the existence; he is not excusing it or rationalizing the evil away.” (Stanford, 106) So the music provides an insight into the quality of good and evil within the soul of one human being. Secondly, she could live her own life which meant she could escape from the control under her father. When Sophie was a teenager, she had to work for her father---typed letters for him. She would suffer language attack when she made some mistakes. For example, there was one time that Sophie incorrectly input some words, and then her father said” Your mind is just a lump of dough.”(Styron 301) Although it was launched by language, it hurt Sophie in mind deeply. Living in that patriarchal society, she was not only controlled in her daily routine and self hobbies, but also restricted in thoughts and self-awareness. With the freedom, she finally could start to recognize herself and try to be cure from that kind of hurt.

1.2 Rely on Nathan

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality. (Styron 91)

This is a part of American poem of Mahler which enchanted Sophie a lot. She decided to go before the English class began to the Brooklyn College library and found more work of this great poet. And this can be seen as the beginning of her encounter with her lover Nathan. On her way to the library, she suffered finger rape on the subway. She felt helpless and was terrified, what was even worse was that the aggressive words from Library clerk Mr. Sholom Weiss thrust her back to the Warsaw which let her be senselessly unstrung. Submerged in fear and weak, she finally slump to the floor. When she woke up she saw a handsome young man appeared who gave hope to her life later.

“He gave me life…”(Styron 101) In Sophie’s mind, Nathan was her Christ. He took her to doctor and took care of her, he helped her to rebuild a life of a normal people. “…a gentle monologue, lulling, soothing, murmurously infusing her with a sense of repose; it was a soft refrain so sedative indeed… ” (Styron 106)The gentle and soft way in which Nathan treated Sophie provided the most necessary thing which she was desperate for.--- attention and care. “In the immediate aftermath of the trauma, rebuilding of some minimal form of trust is the primary task. Assurance of safety and protection are of the greatest importance. The survivor who is often in terror of being left alone craves the simple presence of a sympathetic person. She needs clear and explicit assurance that she will not be abandoned once again.” From Herman’s statement, Nathan was the important appearance in Sophie’s life that his care and tenderness all let Sophie build safety. Nathan treated her just like a little girl or we can say a terrified rabbit. He called her “sweetie” “honey” and provided everything she needed to be cure from the bad situation. Finally, the two fell in love with each other but lived a life which was not that stable.

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