Editing Sophie's Choice (novel) (section)

===Plot inspiration===
''Sophie's Choice'' is said to have been partly based on the author's time in Brooklyn, where he met a refugee from Poland,<ref>to-the-brooklyn-of-sophie-s-choice.html</ref> and he is said to have visited Auschwitz while researching the novel.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news| author = AP Staff | date = 3 December 2002 | title='Sophie's Choice' gets Jewish Group's Award | agency = [[Associated Press]] | via = [[The Gainesville Sun]] | url=http://www.gainesville.com/news/20021204/sophies-choice-gets-jewish-groups-award | access-date = 2 May 2023 | language=en}}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}</ref>

[[Alexandra Styron]], the author's daughter, published the following  account in [[The New Yorker]] in 2007: {{blockquote|Sophie had come to him in a dream, Daddy always said. Not much older than I am now, he had woken up in Connecticut and been unable to shake the image of a woman he once knew. She’d lived above him in Flatbush, in the boarding house he immortalized as Yetta Zimmerman’s Pink Palace. She was a Holocaust survivor, as evidenced by her wrist tattoo, Polish and beautiful, but more than that he didn’t know. Her boyfriend was American, but undistinguished. After the book came out, I used to answer the phone at home so my father wouldn’t have to. More than once, women with heavy accents explained the nature of their call in tearful and dramatic tones. “Daddy,” my notes would read, “a lady called. I can’t spell her name. She says she’s Sophie.” And a number somewhere in Michigan, or New Jersey.<ref>Styron, Alexandra (2 December 2007) [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/12/10/reading-my-father  "Reading My Father"]. ''The New Yorker'', accessed 22 Jan 2024</ref>}}

A central element of the novel's plot, the personally catastrophic choice referred to in the title, is said to have been inspired by a story of a Romani woman who was ordered by the Nazis to select which of her children was to be murdered, which Styron attributes{{citation needed|date=November 2015}} to [[Hannah Arendt]]'s ''[[Eichmann in Jerusalem]]''.<ref name="Mathe04" /> However, [[Ira Nadel]] claims that the story is found in Arendt's ''[[The Origins of Totalitarianism]].''<ref>{{cite journal | last1=Robin | first1=Corey | date=2015 | title=Hannah Arendt and Philip Roth: Parallel Lives | url=http://crookedtimber.org/2015/06/09/hannah-arendt-and-philip-roth-parallel-lives/#more-36055 | journal = Crooked Timber (Blog, June 9) | access-date=4 November 2015}}{{better source needed|date=November 2015}}</ref> In that book, Arendt argues that those who ran the camps perpetrated an "attack on the moral person":{{blockquote|Totalitarian terror achieved its most terrible triumph when it succeeded in cutting the moral person off from the individualist escape and in making the decisions of conscience absolutely questionable and equivocal. (...) Who could solve the moral dilemma of the Greek mother, who was allowed by the Nazis to choose which of her three children should be killed?<ref>{{cite book | last=Arendt | first=Hannah | date=1968 | title=The Origins of Totalitarianism (New Edition with Added Prefaces) | location=San Diego | publisher=Harcourt, Inc. | page=[https://archive.org/details/originsoftotali100aren/page/452 452] | isbn=0-15-670153-7 | url-access=registration | url=https://archive.org/details/originsoftotali100aren/page/452 }}</ref>}}

Arendt cites [[Albert Camus]]' ''Twice a Year'' (1947) for the story, without providing a pinpoint reference.<ref>{{cite book | last=Arendt | first=Hannah | date=1968 | title=The Origins of Totalitarianism | location=San Diego | publisher=Harcourt, Inc. | page = 452 | url=https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1962.pdf#page=472 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215020659/https://monoskop.org/images/4/4e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1962.pdf#page=472 | archive-date=2017-02-15 }} See Note 154 on the cited page.</ref><ref>''Twice a Year'' was a 1946 book edition that contained the text of Camus' ''[[The Crisis of Man]]'' (French, ''La Crise de l'homme''), a work that gives the examples of four moral contradictions (including the Greek mother's exposure{{clarify|date = May 2023}}).{{citation needed|date = May 2023}}</ref><ref>Camus read this complete essay at [[Columbia University]] on March 28, 1946. See:
* {{cite web | last=Kühner | first=Wilhelm | title=Albert Camus on "The Human Crisis" | website=Medium | date=2019-05-20 | url=https://medium.com/k%C3%BChner-kommentar/albert-camus-on-the-human-crisis-5b61e9b6faf1 | access-date=2020-01-24}} and 
* {{cite web | author = Özkırımlı, Umut | date = April 18, 2018 | title='The Human Crisis' and Impossible Choices | website=Ahval | url=https://ahvalnews.com/morality/human-crisis-and-impossible-choices | access-date=2020-01-24}}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}, and links therein. 
The lecture was re-delivered 70 years later, at the same amphitheater, narrated by actor [[Viggo Mortensen]], see {{cite web | author = Maison Francaise Staff | date = February 2016 | title = 'The Human Crisis' by Albert Camus, 70 years later | work = maisonfrancaise.org | url = http://maisonfrancaise.org/ldquothe-human-crisisrdquo-by-albert-camus-70-years-later | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160226115430/http://maisonfrancaise.org/ldquothe-human-crisisrdquo-by-albert-camus-70-years-later | archive-date = 2016-02-26 | access-date = 2 May 2023 }}{{better source needed|date = May 2023}}</ref>