Summary: Chapter Ten

On the morning of the day that she decided to seduce Hoss, Sophie learned from a prisoner named Bronek that Hoss was soon leaving. This information spurred Sophie to act quickly. However, before she even met with Hoss for the day, Sophie was sexually assaulted by the housekeeper, a German woman named Wilhelmine. She was left shocked and fearful but went faithfully to Hoss’s office to complete her work. That afternoon, Hoss asked her about how she was able to obtain a position as a secretary. Sophie seized the chance to tell him that she had been imprisoned by mistake, and that her father was anti-Semitic as well. She hoped this information would make Hoss sympathetic to her, but he only seemed interested in hearing about what had happened to her since she had been imprisoned. Sophie explained that she had been sexually assaulted by a female guard, and when another guard came to her aid, she noticed that Sophie could speak flawless German. The second guard took a liking to Sophie and eventually arranged for her to begin working as a typist and translator. These skills eventually led to Sophie being given the position as secretary to Hoss.

Hoss seemed more relaxed and began to confide in Sophie about the stress and difficulty he experienced in his role. Sophie tried to urge him on by speaking negatively about the Jews and showing him the pamphlet. She admitted that she was guilty of smuggling the ham that got her arrested but asked whether she could be freed in light of her track record as a Polish individual who had allied with the Nazis and endorsed anti-Semitic principles. She seemed to be winning Hoss over, and he asked why she hated Jews so intensely. Sophie claimed that she had a younger sister who had been raped by a Jewish man, but this claim proved to be a misstep, as Hoss disagreed with and disliked the portrayal of Jews as hyper-sexualized. He said that he was unimpressed with Sophie’s anti-Semitic beliefs and did not see them as justifying her freedom. However, just as Sophie was losing hope, Hoss began to praise her beauty. He explained that he desired her and pulled her into his arms, but they were interrupted by a knock at the door. After the brief interruption, Hoss stated that he would not take the risk of becoming involved in a sexual relationship with Sophie. Moreover, he was going to send her back to the camp.

Stingo pauses to situate the moment where he and Sophie had this conversation. After the fight between Sophie and Nathan, which led to both of them leaving the boarding house, Stingo spent several days visiting with his father at the hotel where his father was staying. When he returned to the boarding house, Sophie was there packing up the last of her things. Sophie and Stingo went for drinks together, which is when she told him about her time in the Hoss household and the events that took place there. During this conversation, Stingo also saw her drink more heavily than he had in the past.

As Sophie continued her story, she disclosed a shocking fact: she had a son named Jan, and he was with her at the camp. Sophie quickly said that Jan had been taken to a different area of the camp when the two of them arrived and that she couldn’t bear to talk about him. On that day in Hoss’s office, she asked Hoss to release her son if he wouldn’t release her. Hoss immediately refused while Sophie began to weep and begged him to at least allow her to see her son. Sophie admitted to Stingo that she was later tormented by guilt over the way she had acted in that moment but that she would have been willing to do anything in order to get Hoss to allow her to see her son. Surprisingly, Hoss relented and told her that she would be permitted to see her son.

Summary: Chapter Eleven

Stingo’s narration returns to the evening when he met up with his father, after Nathan and Sophie had their terrible fight and left the boarding house separately. Stingo went to the hotel and spent time with his father. At this point, he assumed he would never see Sophie or Nathan again. Stingo’s father noticed his son’s melancholy mood and began to gently urge Stingo to seriously consider returning to the South and moving to the farm. Stingo spent the next two days with his father, taking in the sights of New York during the day and staying at the hotel overnight. When his father gently questioned him, Stingo told him a bit about his infatuation with Sophie. As Stingo reflected on the fact that he had no friends and no romantic prospects, he abruptly decided to return to the South with his father. He planned to leave that very day and went back to the boarding house to collect his things. However, when he got there, he ran into Sophie. He told his father to go on without him and went to the bar with Sophie.

The narrative returns to Sophie’s plans during her time at Auschwitz. During the Nazi regime, a program called Lebensborn allowed for children who were not German but displayed desirable “Aryan” characteristics to be taken from their families and adopted by loyal Nazi families so that they could grow the population of Germany. During her time at the camp, Sophie had schemed to see if there was any way her son could be entered into the program since he was blonde and handsome. At this point in her story, Sophie became overwhelmed, and she and Stingo stopped talking about her history for a while. Stingo was preoccupied with the fact that despite the break-up, Sophie was clearly still in love with Nathan, and she would now be moving out of the boarding house, which would make it much harder for him to see her. After they walked back to the boarding house, Stingo had an outburst, lamenting his grief and anger that Nathan had abruptly shut both Stingo and Sophie out of his life. Sophie explained that Nathan had an inner demon that sometimes caused him to lash out and do terrible things. In the fall of 1946 (a few months after Sophie and Nathan first met and months before they met Stingo) while the two of them were vacationing in Connecticut, Nathan had tried to kill both Sophie and himself.

Sophie began to talk about the early months of her relationship with Nathan, in the summer and autumn of 1946. At first, she was infatuated with him and grateful for how he had helped to restore her to health and bought her expensive gifts. Nathan and Sophie had planned a weekend trip to go and observe the autumn foliage in Connecticut. The night before they were to leave, Nathan came home in a manic state and took her to a party where he made the abrupt announcement that the two of them were going to be married. However, as the conversation at the party turned to the Nuremberg trials and retribution against Nazi Germany, Sophie became disturbed and filled with a sense of foreboding.

The narrative skips ahead to a scene of Nathan showing Sophie a capsule of sodium cyanide and instructing her how to use it. It then returns to the morning of their departure for Connecticut when Nathan awakened Sophie in Brooklyn and told her to get ready to leave for their trip. He was already high and continued to consume substances throughout the day. During their drive, Nathan abruptly became extremely angry and lashed out at Sophie, accusing her of being unfaithful. As he became more agitated, he began to drive recklessly. A passing police car pulled them over for speeding, and Sophie charmed the officer into letting them off with a warning. As they continued to drive, Nathan began to rant about the fact that Sophie survived the Holocaust while so many others perished and accused her of colluding with the Nazis. He even taunted her by calling her Irma, in reference to Irma Grese, a notorious female Nazi prison guard.

Nathan eventually pulled over and dragged Sophie into the woods where he demanded that she perform oral sex on him. Afterward, he beat and kicked her while she lay passively. Nathan finally stopped as he began to panic that he was coming down from his high, and Sophie helped him to get back to the car and take more pills to settle himself. They went on to the inn where they would be staying, and once they were in their room, Nathan showed her the lethal pills he had prepared and explained his plan. Sophie experienced a strange sense of calm and did not argue. They spent a few hours in the room, periodically being interrupted by the innkeeper asking if they wanted to come down for dinner or drinks. Eventually, Nathan fell asleep from all the drugs he had consumed, and Sophie flushed the cyanide capsules down the toilet. When Nathan woke up calmly, Sophie told him that she had a son named Jan and that the boy was lost at Auschwitz. She made Nathan promise to never ask her to talk about her son again.

Analysis: Chapters Ten and Eleven

Although Sophie blames herself for the way she behaved during her time at Auschwitz, this section of the novel provides compelling evidence that she was a victim who did the best that she could in an unimaginable situation. In her narration, Sophie emphasizes how she was better off than many prisoners in the camp, and this deflects attention from how much she still suffered. Sophie’s position as a Christian, Polish woman renders her account of Auschwitz complex and has sometimes led to criticism of Styron’s novel for representing the Holocaust through the story of someone who was not Jewish. Still, there is no doubt that Sophie suffered immense hardship, and her insistence on minimizing her trauma reflects an inability to fully cope with it. This tendency to minimize and repress her suffering is highlighted by the way she brushes aside the sexual assault she suffered on the day she tried to seduce Hoss. Sophie’s insistence on focusing on the ways she failed and violated her principles, rather than on the many ways she was violated and wronged, show that she is blaming and tormenting herself for the wrongdoings of others.

Sophie’s revelation that she had a child reveals the depth of the trauma she is grappling with and how disassociated she has become from her past. Sophie’s insistence that neither Nathan nor Stingo ever speak to her about her son reveals that Sophie is trying to live her life as though her child simply never existed. Sophie has a misguided belief that this approach will minimize her pain and allow her to move forward, but her refusal to acknowledge her trauma forestalls any attempt at healing from it. Sophie’s insistence on remaining in an abusive relationship and defining herself as a bad and shameful person also show that she is not coping with her losses. Sophie also displays self-loathing and disgust when describing trying to ingratiate herself to Hoss and beg him to have mercy on her son. Sophie does not seem to realize that she was powerless in this moment and that strategies such as seducing Hoss were the only recourse she had. Her actions inspire sympathy, especially once it becomes clear that Sophie was trying to protect her child.

The portrayal of Commandant Hoss in this section represents a complex character who can encompass evil and ordinary human qualities. Stingo’s earlier discussion of Hoss’s autobiography introduced the Commandant as a man who utterly absolved himself of moral responsibility in deference to a rhetoric of duty and loyalty. In his interactions with Sophie, Hoss shows a similar pattern of grotesquely treating his task of slaughtering thousands of human beings as though it is merely a complicated administrative responsibility. His lack of irony when he complains to Sophie about feeling overburdened and overstretched by the demands placed upon him reveals that he has completely dehumanized the people who are being slaughtered in the camp. Through his portrayal of Hoss, Styron illuminates the mindset required for mass atrocities to be carried out. Hoss has cut himself off from any ability to reflect on his moral agency within the system he propagates, and he depicts himself as merely a cog in a machine. Hoss’s chilling displacement of agency hints at why Sophie clings so strongly to the notion that she is “bad.” If she can see herself as bad, then she at least continues to exist within a moral universe where individual decisions carry weight. If Sophie rationalizes her actions, she would be participating in the pattern of Nazi officials and conspirators abdicating responsibility.

Sophie’s description of her attempts to seduce Hoss is one example of the theme of the objectification and sexualization of women by male characters shown throughout the novel. Hoss’s simultaneous attraction and disgust foreshadows how Nathan will later combine lust and punishment in the way he treats Sophie. Hoss acknowledges his desire for Sophie, but he never cedes any power to her, and this combination serves to further rob Sophie of any sense of agency. Hoss comments on Sophie’s physical beauty, paralleling how Nathan will subsequently be struck by her beauty and become her protector as a result. Throughout her life, Sophie has coped with adversity by using her beauty and sexuality as bargaining chips, but she is tormented by shame over the consequences of having done so. Sophie seeks sexual liberation with Nathan because she wants to feel a sense of agency around her own sexuality, but this relationship also becomes animated by displays of dominance and submission. Sophie recalls with horror licking and kissing the boots of Commandant Hoss but shows no emotion over incidents as degrading as Nathan attempting to urinate on her. Her experiences of degradation and shame have become so muddled that Sophie is numb to any sense of her own value and worth.

Sophie’s plan to get her son enrolled in the Lebensborn program reflects her willingness to sacrifice almost everything to ensure Jan’s survival but also furthers her sense of guilt. It is only because of fortunate coincidence that Jan was blonde and handsome and therefore would even be considered for the program, and this circumstance means that Sophie and her son had options available to them when so many others did not. Much like with her position in the camp, Sophie has to carry the shame of knowing she had a unique privilege available to her. While the Lebensborn program might seem like a tremendous opportunity, it actually represents a fate that some parents would find even more loathsome than the death of their child. If Jan were to be enrolled, Sophie would have to live with the knowledge that her son would grow up surrounded by Nazi ideology, and he would likely eventually become a soldier and potentially even a man who would commit the very atrocities she iwitnesses. When Sophie advocates for Jan to get enrolled in the Lebensborn program, she is actually choosing between her son’s life and the loss of his humanity and morality. This horrific choice foreshadows one that will be revealed in more detail later in the novel.

Stingo’s outburst in Chapter Eleven about feeling abandoned by Nathan reveals the depth of his insecurity and loneliness. Nathan’s departure has far more serious consequences for Sophie than for Stingo, but Stingo laments the loss just as visibly. In an ironic foreshadowing of what Sophie will later disclose, Stingo laments, “He can’t take people’s love for him and piss on it like that. It’s unfair!” Stingo’s comment reveals that he believes he lives in a fair and morally ordered universe. Sophie has seen enough atrocity to stop expecting any alignment between what seems fair and what actually happens, and she has significantly lowered her expectations. Sophie can survive her relationship with Nathan because she is unsurprised by cruel actions, but for Stingo, these actions are much more shocking. Stingo’s lament is childish in tone, but it shows his emotional innocence and the sheltered life he has led up to this point.

In this section, the trauma Sophie endured in Europe is paralleled and heightened by her account of the traumatic episode with the suicide pact. By now, it is clear that Nathan and Sophie’s relationship involves aspects of physical and emotional abuse, but the incident in Connecticut reveals the shocking depths of Nathan’s rage and depravity. His behavior shows that he not only wants to hurt Sophie but that he also wants to humiliate and shame her as much as possible. Sophie’s passivity and complicity are highly disturbing. She doesn’t try to defend herself or fight back, and this blind acceptance of suffering is linked to her belief that she needs to be punished for her past sins. In fact, Sophie seems to find a kind of relief in surrendering her agency and allowing Nathan to decide if she lives or dies. As the novel’s title hints, and the plot later reveals, Sophie has had to make terrible decisions in moments of crisis, and she is now exhausted and simply wants to accept whatever the universe hands to her. Being with Nathan is satisfying for Sophie because the relationship allows her to relinquish all control and be totally subservient to the will of someone else.

Sophie’s own reflections reveal why she has clung to the relationship with Nathan nearly a year after the incident in which he nearly killed her. On the morning after the failed suicide pact, several incidents combine to provide insight into Sophie’s state of mind and how she has been impacted by this dramatic event. Sophie reflects on a climactic moment of feeling that her religious faith is utterly gone, she admits to Nathan that she had a son, and she resumes her sexual relationship with Nathan. The combination of these events implies that after the suicide pact, Sophie makes it her sole goal to sever ties with her past and pursue forgetfulness. She wants to abandon her previous identity as a Christian and a mother and lose herself utterly in the pleasure of oblivion that Nathan offers to her via sex, alcohol, and drugs. Sophie had previously tried to attempt suicide but lacked the ability to follow through, so the possibility that Nathan might eventually kill her gives her the welcome possibility of death without the moral agency required to commit the act herself. Sophie does not even care whether Nathan might threaten her life again in the future and instead surrenders to nihilism—a belief that nothing matters.