Talk:Sophie's Choice (novel)

Bad review
In this academic review the book is highly criticized; I'll live it up to other editors whether to include this in the article.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 16:15, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

"Only Streep took home a statue"! What an ambiguous and juvenile sentence!. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.232.66.242 (talk) 22:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sophie Choice Styron.jpg
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wikification
It seems to me that this article could use wikification.Heatherfire 00:10, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * In what sense? 185.13.50.212 (talk) 09:21, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Controversy
There has been additional controversy over the novel for perpetuating certain notions. It actually says, in capital letters, that Poland is an antisemitic country, and then goes on to say that antisemitism was practically invented in Poland. It perpetuates the notion that Poles, by and large, were happy to have the Nazis come in and rid them of their "Jewish problem," and even suggests that many Poles admired the Nazis until the Nazis started coming after Poles as well. It perpetuates the notion that Polish help for the Jews in Poland during the Holocaust came just from a tiny handful of individuals, opposed to the mainstream. All these things are widely believed without question, and not even regarded as controversial--believed to be the truth because, well, because everybody knows it. In fact, a little honest look at history shows them to be far from the truth. But it's a large basis for the novel. The novel is based on a commonly believed slander of Poland and the Polish people. 140.147.236.195 (talk) 21:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)Stephen Kosciesza

Find reliable sources who have documented this controversy regarding this book. You say "All these things are widely believed without question," which implies a lack of controversy. Regardingsweetness (talk) 17:47, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Move?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:39, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Sophie& → Sophie's Choice – Relisted. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:46, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Latter is a dab for two pages and a redlink. This can be fixed with for —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 06:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose: WP:TWODABS only applies if there is a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. I think the film is quite popular so I suggest leaving the pages as is. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 06:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Support. Clear and unambiguous WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. No need to disambiguate it unnecessarily, and making it the direct topic in no way affects the article on the film, which is already properly titled and needs only a hatnote on the primary page. Softlavender (talk) 00:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Saying it is a "clear and unambiguous WP:PRIMARYTOPIC" ignores the fact that the film is very popular and even won an Oscar, and the film page gets nearly three times as much traffic as the novel (film versus novel). This move does affect the film article because it gives it lower priority when a reader searches for simply "Sophie's Choice". Unless we always make novels upon which films are based the primary topic—which is currently not a policy, guideline, or done consistently in practice—I can't see how it would be appropriate in this case. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 00:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I think the page views prove that the novel is not "much more likely" than the film to be the article sought when the reader searches for 'Sophie's Choice' (see WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). Jenks24 (talk) 09:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support; it doesn't have to be "much more likely" if there are only two choices -- only slightly more likely. Powers T 20:27, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * But it's not slightly more likely–it's significantly less likely. The film gets 3 times as much traffic. And I challenge the initial premises anyway, because WP:TWODABS says you still need a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 20:33, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't care which one we pick. But pick one, for heaven's sake.  It's silly to have a disambiguation page with only two options on it when we can save half of our readers a click.  Powers T 02:30, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. If anything should be the primary topic, it should be the film. However, leaving the disambig page as it is, seems best in my opinion.  ~ [  Scott M. Howard  ] ~ [  Talk  ]:[  Contribs  ] ~  21:08, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose move the film to the primary position. 65.94.45.185 (talk) 04:02, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose Generally I think that novels should be the primary over any darmatic adaptation, no matter how much "more" well known the latter may be, but the current status quo is an acceptable compromise for situations where there is a particularly large disparity. Nick Cooper (talk) 08:54, 7 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose I would not recognize the title were it not for Meryl Streep. Many would not have read the book without the movie marketing campaign and awards. The current status works well. Bcharles (talk) 15:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This is a classic case where a two-way DAB is appropriate. The film is certainly a major film, but the novel is also a major novel in its own right, quite apart from the film. (I also notice a redlink to a notable opera... it should not even be a two-way DAB forever.) Andrewa (talk) 01:48, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Needs detail on what happened to Eva.
The article mysteriously says, "Only at the end of the book do we also learn what became of Sophie's daughter, named Eva," and it is left at that. According to Wikipedia's guidelines, spoilers are allowed and the article feels unfinished without knowing what happened to her. We find out what happened to everyone else (excepting her son which is never resolved) so why leave out Eva? I don't remember it's been so long, which is why I came here. I wanted to refresh my memory and unfortunately that isn't going to happen. 173.17.225.100 (talk) 19:15, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
 * This was addressed and fixed. MagnoliaSouth (talk) 10:37, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

spoiler: a secret revealed near the end of the story
It's an awful, awful idea to give way, in the opening paragraph of the article, the "secret revealed near the end of the story".

I'll at least move it down to the "Plot summary" section, where it shouldn't surprise too many people.

(It's a great pity that Template:spoiler hasn't been brought back yet.) Gronky (talk) 12:47, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Major Themes is Original research?
I added a "Original Research" noticed to the major themes section, as it feels like it is original research, and I don't see any citations or a source for that section. 188.37.41.230 (talk) 07:17, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There has been some editing to change the structure of the "Themes" section (now a sub-subsection), but the concern remains, and so the tag is still in place. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 04:54, 7 November 2015 (UTC)
 * After waiting a month to see response to changes, the paragraph has been moved here to Talk. See below. 73.210.154.39 (talk) 21:46, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Edits of this day
I am now calling for Expert attention to the article, after having mapped a series of very serious issues, having to do with its naive content, the redress of which I began to attempt today. To present a paragraph on a minor school censorship issue as the sole focus of the books controversial aspects is to have completely missed the boat: Styron was attempting to reorient the views of the reading public in a significant way, with regard to its interpretation of the Holocaust, a perspective (regarding Styron's artistic intentions) that appears to be the preponderant view of scholars in this area, in no small part because Styron said as much in essays and interviews contemporary with the first publication of the novel). Bottom line, this article has been inaccurate, in significant ways, for a very long time; and while I have done a bit to orient it properly, it needs expert sets of historian and literary eyes to give it a thorough going over and re-write. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 05:10, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Problematic editing
I'm concerned about the recent sweeping edits to the article that are clearly agenda driven. I'm not sufficiently familiar with Wikipedia policy to know how best to flag this, but I'm hoping that this note might draw attention to the plight of the article, so that more knowledgeable editors can clean it up and restore neutrality and balance. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arohanui (talk • contribs) 05:21, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * No agenda-driven edits. The recent edits were not agenda-driven, but they were accuracy driven, and based on published secondary source content, as WP requires, rather than on editor-generated opinion. Specifically, the interpretations now appearing regarding the author's intent for the novel are those held broadly, by the preponderance of academic scholars, on the subject, because they are so clearly based in the authors own contemporaneous, explicit published comments. Feel free, add some good scholarly secondary sources that argue your alternative interpretations, to Further reading. Let us see your opinion, through the sources you propose. Personal opinions do not matter a whit, otherwise. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 21:49, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Unsourced, problematic paragraph
In followup to an issue dating to March of 2014 (see section above, "Major Themes is Original research?"), attention to which was called by another editor, the following paragraph is moved here, for lack of any sourcing:"One of the important parallels in Sophie's Choice, as Stingo explicitly points out, is between the worst abuses of the American South – both its slave-holding past and the lynchings of the book's present – and Nazi anti-Semitism. Just as Sophie is left conflicted by her father's attitudes towards Poland's Jews, Stingo analyzes his own culpability derived from his family's slave-holding past, eventually deciding to write a book about Nat Turner – an obvious parallel to Styron's own controversial novel The Confessions of Nat Turner. Similarly, by placing a non-Jewish character at the center of an Auschwitz story, Styron suggests the universality of the suffering under the Third Reich. Though several characters, including Stingo, discuss in detail the fact that the Jewish people suffered far more than other groups, Stingo also describes Hitler's attempts to eliminate the Slavs or turn them into slave labor and makes the case that the Holocaust cannot be understood as an exclusively Jewish tragedy. In contrast, Nathan, whose paranoid condition makes him particularly sensitive about his ethnicity, is the novel's prime spokesman for this exclusivity. His inability to cope with the fact that Sophie, a Polish-Catholic, shared the sufferings of European Jews, while he was prevented, by his mental illness, from even enlisting in the military, causes him to accuse Sophie of complicity in the Holocaust and leads to their mutual destruction."

It should be put back into the "Themes" section, even sentence by sentence, when some source can be provided for these views. Otherwise, they are WP:OR. 73.210.154.39 (talk) 21:40, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Sophie's Choice - 20th-Century American Bestsellers
64.175.42.92 (talk) 03:00, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers of 1979
 * http://unsworth.unet.brandeis.edu/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=Sophie%27s+Choice
 * Adding this link from a *.edu site, to the external links section. TY for adding it here. Leprof 7272 (talk) 02:19, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

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Anti-Polish fiction
The book misinforms about history of Poland. It would be impossible to publish a book containing similar anti-Semitic text, but anti-Polish is O.K. Xx236 (talk) 13:11, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Rosenfeld?
Is this an article about Sophie's Choice, or is this an article about Rosenfeld's article on Sophie's Choice? I realize this is a controversial book and the Holocaust is a controversial subject, but the author received the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation's Witness to Justice Award. It's strange that this one critic is so strongly represented on this page. 2600:6C64:643F:391D:718F:8793:787:E300 (talk) 02:18, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Persons murdered and survivors injured in the holocaust.
There seems to be some anger aimed at Styron for shifting the focus of his novel from Jewish suffering and murder to non-Jewish suffering and murder. Although Jewish persons bore the largest number of vicious attacks, they were not the only ones to feel the sting of the Nazis. In its lede, the following Wikipedia article provides a graph of the other groups that were also slaughtered along with associated citations. 6,000,000 Jewish people were slaughtered while up to 19,600,000 people in total died at the hands of the Nazis. As large as these numbers are, they still do not include the legions of survivors who suffered at Nazi hands, both in the camps and out, the numbers of whom can only be guessed, and who came through with a multitude of physical and emotional injuries. So many people are ignorant of these facts that they are therefore little spoken of. For the number of deaths, see: "Holocaust victims" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_victims Thank you for your time, Wordreader (talk) 15:31, 25 May 2023 (UTC)