An Archetypal Exploration Of The Life, Death, And Rebirth In Sophie’s Choice By William Styron

William Styron is one of the most well-known American novelists in the20thcentury. He is one of the representative novelists of American Southern Literature. Hisworks are well read by readers at home and abroad. In the year of1980, his Sophie’sChoice won the US National Book Award for Fiction and remained to be nationalbest-seller for47weeks in the New York Times list.In William Styron’s works, we can find the diversified deep-South themes andstyles. However, he has never confined himself to the Southern tradition. As aSouthern writer, Styron explores many social and human problems through hisjudgmental intuition and his specific tragic consciousness. For instance, he probesinto the human broken souls by describing the evils of Nazi in Sophie’s Choice, andexplores the trauma of American South in his Lie Down in Darkness. Thus, due toStyron’s unique personal experience and keen observation of the human nature, hisworks often enchant readers with profound and tragic enlightenment.This thesis is fully supported by the archetypal theory and archetypal criticism,for the author the thesis has, as it is hoped, explored the common human experiencesin life, death and rebirth, which are embodied by the archetypes in the novel.Archetypes are the content of the collective unconsciousness, and embodied of humanexperiences collected a millions of years. They will appear in literary works to bringhuman joys and pains to the reader.In the1960s, archetypal criticism reaches a climax, and has a great influence on literary studies. The main representative scholars are Frye and Jung. For Frye,literature originates from myth. Different from Frye, Jung holds that archetypes areembodiments of the collective unconscious, and representations of the humanphysical and spiritual experiences amassed over thousands of years. Archetypes areuniversal, and shared by all humans in spite of their gender, race, culture, education,economy and politics. They appear very often in literary works reflects human joysand pains.This thesis aims to explore life, death and rebirth archetypes in Sophie’s Choice.Probing into what life means to Sophie, why she chooses “death”, and how she gets arebirth. Because Sophie’s Choice is not merely a literary work, but also a mirrorthrough which we can see ourselves more clearly. Death is not the end for the peoplewho chose to die. Moreover, death is another beginning of new life. The world isalways changing, and there is no eternal thing in the world. In Sophie’s Choice,Styron subverts our traditional idea of life and death. It makes us to get to the birth ofevolution of human mind, and all death forebodes another form of rebirth.There are four chapters in this thesis. The first chapter is introduction. It gives abrief introduction to the writer, the novel, and the archetypal criticism. The secondchapter studies of “life” and “death” in Sophie’s Choice from archetypal perspective.The third chapter explores the “rebirth” in Sophie’s Choice. The last chapter isconclusion.