42 pages • 1 hour read
William StyronSophie's Choice
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
While Nathan is at work, Stingo and Sophie frequently share picnic lunches in the park. There, Sophie continues to reveal bits and pieces of her backstory to Stingo. She says that shortly after her first encounter with Nathan, he arranged for her to see a specialist who diagnosed an iron deficiency. After supplementation, it only took a matter of weeks for Sophie’s health to improve. Stingo asks if her feelings for Nathan were love at first sight. Sophie says it was more like gratitude for the money he spent on her behalf because Nathan covered all her medical expenses. For his part, Stingo has trouble squaring Nathan’s initial kindness with his later abuse. He asks himself, “How could this saintly and compassionate fellow have become the living terror I had beheld on Yetta’s doorstep only a short time ago?” (172).
Stingo is distracted during their lunch because this is the evening when he’s supposed to have his sexual encounter with Leslie. Wild with anticipation, Stingo takes a train that evening to the Lapidus home in Brooklyn Heights. Contrary to his imaginary stereotype of a Jewish family, Stingo is greeted by Leslie’s wealthy, upper-class parents. They are about to leave for a weekend at the Jersey shore, so Stingo eagerly anticipates having Leslie all to himself. After a make-out session that lasts for hours, Stingo begins to realize that Leslie has no intention of having sex with him despite all her seductive talk.
When he angrily confronts her about her duplicity, she tearfully confesses that she’s a virgin and plans to stay that way until marriage. She blames her aberrant behavior on her latest psychiatrist and spends a few more hours trying to explain her mental state to Stingo. In the wee hours of the morning, Stingo leaves. He ruefully concludes, “If through those frigid little harpies in Virginia I had been betrayed chiefly by Jesus, I have been just as cruelly swindled at Leslie’s hands by the egregious Doktor Freud. Two smart Jews, believe me” (193).
Chapter 8 Summary
Nathan, Sophie, and Stingo settle into a comfortable routine. On hot summer evenings, they go to a neighborhood cocktail lounge called Maple Court. Stingo says, “Nathan and Sophie were like an old married couple to me now, we were all inseparable; and I idly wondered if some of the more sophisticated of the Maple Court habitués did not regard us as a ménage à trois” (198). Because it has been weeks since Nathan’s last tirade, Stingo persuades himself that Nathan has mellowed. The older man even asks to read part of Stingo’s manuscript and is lavish in his praise of the young man’s talent.
During this time, Stingo’s father announces a plan to visit his son in the big city. Stingo is pleased with the way his life is going until a new crisis threatens to overturn his hard-won sense of stability. Sophie tells Stingo that Nathan has made some dramatic breakthrough in his biological research that might result in a Nobel Prize. He wants to meet the two of them for dinner that evening to celebrate. Stingo says he will have to pick up his father at Penn Station but agrees to meet early for a drink. That evening, as Sophie and Stingo wait for Nathan, Sophie confides her fears that trouble might be brewing. She has a hunch that Nathan’s feverish exuberance signals the onset of another downward spiral.
When Nathan finally arrives at Maple Court, his mood has shifted. He immediately begins accusing Sophie of cheating on him and implies she survived Auschwitz by murdering Jews. He then turns his rage on Stingo, criticizing the young man’s manuscript and accusing him of being infected with Southern racism. Sophie is in tears, and Stingo is ready to punch Nathan. Stingo goes to the bathroom to cool down. By the time he returns, both Nathan and Sophie are gone. Back at Yetta’s house, Stingo discovers that Sophie and Nathan have packed and left in two separate directions. Sophie has gone to a hotel while Nathan has taken a cab to his brother’s home.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
Stingo’s obsession with establishing a regular sex life is described in his relationship with Leslie. In page after page, he talks about his fantasies of what their encounter will hold as well as his earlier abortive attempts to gain some sexual experience while still living in the South. Stingo’s rueful description of his disappointed hopes is comical. His frustration doesn’t stem merely from his interaction with Leslie but also from his infatuation with Sophie, which offers no prospect of resolution.
These chapters also focus on the pleasant rapport that develops among the three principal characters. The reader can easily understand why Stingo is attracted to the couple. They help encourage his writing and assuage the loneliness of an isolated Southerner in the big city. Stingo and Sophie create a duo within the triad as the two of them share lunches in the park, and Stingo delves more deeply into Sophie’s past. Sophie’s description of Nathan’s solicitous care as she recovers from malnutrition causes Stingo to wonder how such a kind man could transform into the monster glimpsed briefly in the last segment. Nathan’s outburst presents Stingo with the same choice that Sophie must face. Which version of Nathan is to be believed?
The reader becomes alerted to Nathan’s volatility when Sophie warns that his jubilant behavior is usually an indicator that he’s about to do something terrible. Her foreboding is well-founded when Nathan launches into his familiar accusations about Sophie’s fidelity and his equally hurtful insinuations that Stingo has no talent at a writer. When this Jekyll-Hyde transformation occurs once again, it becomes personally painful to Stingo now that he has become the recipient of Nathan’s benevolence just as Sophie has been. Even more painful is the discovery that Stingo’s newfound sense of stability has been shattered. When he returns home, he finds both Nathan and Sophie gone in opposite directions and knows that he may never see either of his friends again.
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By William Styron
