The Holocaust, Gender and Suffering in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

The Holocaust was one of the most horrible periods in human history as during the years of the Second World War the individuals who were regarded to be inferior by the Nazi Germany were exposed to never-ending physical and mental abuse. Despite the fact that all the victims of the Shoah ― males and females alike ― were subjected to gender-specific torture and humiliation, the investigation of their unique experiences have been largely neglected by scholars who have regarded the victims’ gender to be an insignificant factor in the process of experiencing the horrors of the Nazi genocide. For this reason, the aim of the master’s thesis was to prove through examining Sophie Zawistowska’s fate in William Styron’s famous novel, Sophie’s Choice that the sufferers of the Holocaust encountered special forms or dehumanization and torture based on their gender, and even responded to these problems with gender-specific reactions and feelings.MSc/MAAmerikanisztikaB