The Story Archive

Sophie's Choice

Alan J. Pakula · 1982 CE · Film · Modern / American · Contemporary

A young Southern novelist takes a room in a pink Brooklyn boarding house in 1947 and falls in with the couple upstairs, a Polish survivor with a number on her arm and the brilliant, erratic American who loves her. Her account of the war changes each time she gives it, and his laboratory job proves as unreliable as her Warsaw childhood. Streep learned Polish and German for it, and American drama learned to look at the camps.

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Lineage

Attributes

Genre
TragedyHistoricalPsychological
Theme
Guilt & ConscienceSuffering & EnduranceLoveMemory & Time
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Tragic HeroLoverEveryman
Plot structure
Frame NarrativeConfessionNonlinear / Fractured
Symbol / motif
The HouseThe PrisonThe Letter
Conflict
vs Selfvs Fate / Gods
Mode / tone
TragicElegiac
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

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