Editing Sophie's Choice (novel) (section)

===Themes===
Sylvie Mathé notes that Styron's "position" in the writing of this novel was made clear in his contemporary interviews and essays, in the latter case, in particular "Auschwitz", "Hell Reconsidered", and "A Wheel of Evil Come Full Circle",<ref name=Mathe04/> and quotes Alvin Rosenfeld's summary of Styron's position, where Rosenfeld states that:<ref name=Rosenfeld79>Rosenfeld, Alvin H. (1979) "The Holocaust According to William Styron," ''Midstream,'' Vol. 25, No. 10 (December), pp. 43-49.</ref>
{{blockquote|sign=|source=|(1) while [Styron] acknowledges Jewish suffering under the Nazis, he insists on seeing Auschwitz in general or universalistic terms, as a murderous thrust against "mankind" or "the entire human family"; (2) in line with the above, he sees his own role as "correcting" the view that the Holocaust was directed solely or exclusively against the Jews by focusing attention on the many Christians, and particularly the Slavs, who also perished in the camps; (3) … Auschwitz was "anti-Christian" as well as "anti-Semitic", and hence assertions of Christian guilt are misplaced and perhaps even unnecessary; (4) since he rejects historical explanations of Christian anti-Semitism as causative, Styron is drawn to the view, set forth by Richard Rubenstein and others … that in its essential character Auschwitz was a capitalistic slave society as much as or even more than it was an extermination center; and (5) viewed against European examples of barbarism and slavery, epitomized by Auschwitz, the American South's treatment of the blacks looks pretty good and "… seems benevolent by comparison".<ref name=Mathe04/><ref name=Rosenfeld79/>}}

Rosenfeld, summarizing, states, "The drift of these revisionist [sic] views, all of which culminate in Sophie's Choice, is to take the Holocaust out of Jewish and Christian history and place it within a generalized history of evil."<ref name=Rosenfeld79/>{{rp|44}} Mathé reinforces Rosenfeld's conclusion with a quote from Styron himself, who noted in his "Hell Reconsidered" essay that "the titanic and sinister forces at work in history and in modern life… threaten all men, not only Jews."<ref name="StyronHell78">Styron, William (1978) "Hell Reconsidered," In ''This Quiet Dust and Other Writings,'' [1982], pp. 105-115, New York, NY, USA: Random House, {{ISBN|0-394-50934-X}}, {{ISBN|978-0-394-50934-1}}, see [https://archive.org/details/thisquietdust00will], accessed 7 November 2015.</ref>{{rp|114}} She goes on to note that Styron's choices to represent these ideas, and to incorporate them so clearly into the narrative of his novel, resulted in polemic and controversy that continued, at least into the early years of the new millennium.<ref name=Mathe04/>