Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. [Vol. 5.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 25)

Studies - László Dányi: Interpretations of Sexuality in William Styron's Sophie's Choice

a better understanding of things. Stingo, urged by his sexual desires, is impatient and after a while he gets fed up with trying to understand. At the beginning he tries to understand Leslie's frustrations, but finally he gives it up. It is the same with his mother. He tries to understand her suffering, but then he wants to escape and eschew his thoughts about her behind. Is it all right to say that he cannot understand the significance of these situations? Perhaps he does not want to understand them because he cannot understand them. I do not think that this assumption is the explanation, however, if I accepted this explanation, I could end my essay by saying that Stingo is just a simple-minded character to whom it is too much to comprehend, analyze or synthesize. I think the explanation lies somewhere else. Perhaps there is no final truth to understand. Perhaps the problem is not with Stingo but with the aim of understanding. There is not one single thing to understand, there is not one single explanation, there is not one single and eternal truth. It takes a long time until the narrator Stingo realizes it. Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable (SC 623). Auscwitz is only one example. Stingo tries to understand Auschwitz the way he wants to understand sexuality. Since death, horrors and almost all situations in the novel are linked to sex, it seems to be suitable to find an explanation to the failure of Stingo's sex life in the diversity of sexuality. At the beginning of the novel he is frustrated because he always has a lot of truths in his mind and he wants to achieve a monolithic single truth about sex. He tries to meet the requirements of the truth of the culture that ingrained the mystique of manhood in him. Even his own ideas related to truth in sexuality are different and vary from situation to situation, he has his truths, his ideas; he wants to meet the moral requirements of the age; he has Leslie's truth; he wants to know Sophie' truth. But at the beginning he 49