"sophie's Choice" Existentialism

William Styron is a famous American writers after the second World War . Although Styron is regarded as a successor to William Faulkner both in themes and style,he never confined himself to the Southern tradition. Instead, he showed diversified writing technical styles in in his novels. The period of Styron lived exactly is the time when Existentialism represented by Sartre flourished in the United States, as an intellectual who is sensitive to social thought and responsible and moral, styron gived a great deal of attention on social change and social issues, combined with his experience to the threat of death and the cold world, it makes that his works faint luster out of an existential.In this paper, we start form "Sophie's Choice" which is Styron's masterpiece to discussion on the relationship between the writer and existentialism and analyze the consciousness of the existential philosophy of the work.At first,we would like to make clear the links between Styron and the existentialism to clarify the ideological background when Styron was writing.By our examination of the impact and communication of the existentialism in the United States and the Influence of existentialism on Styron, we try to be sure of the impact of Sartre to the mind of Styron . Then, we choose Sophie's Choice to analyze the Styron's attention of the people's choices in the situation of war, death and others , besides of the absurdity of human existence in theworld and the human's choice.But the view of the existence of mankind which is reflected from "Sophie's Choice" is different from Styron's view. It embodys in three aspects: Fuzzy Ethics and The exposure of the evil, Responsibility theory and Rely on religion and love for redemption, the pessimistic hidden under positive and optimistic attitude. From this we know the significance of "Sophie's Choice"and the reason it shocked readers.