Sophie’s Choice Monologues

Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.

When I first met this one here, she was a rag and a bone and a hank of hair. And that was a whole year-and-a-half after the Russians had liberated the camp she was in.

This toast is in honor of my disassociation of you two creeps. Disassociation from you, coony captive cunt of King's county. And you, the dreary dregs of Dixie.

On this bridge on which so many great Americans writers stood and reached out for words to give America its voice... looking toward the land that gave them Whitman... from its Eastern edge dreamt his country's future and gave it words... on this span of which Thomas Wolfe and Hart Crane wrote, we welcome Stingo into that pantheon of the Gods... whose words are all we know of immortality. To Stingo!

You spent the whole fucking afternoon with him, or should I say, you spent the whole afternoon fucking him.

We put the little sweetie here on a massive doses of ferrous sulphate and she began to bloom like a rose. A rose. A rose. A beautiful fucking rose. You're something!

Tell me. Tell me, Sophie. The same anti-Semitism for which Poland has gained such a worldwide renown that this similar anti-Semitism guide your own destiny, help you along, protect you in a manner of speaking so you became one of the minuscule, handful of people who lived - while the millions died? Tell me. Tell me why? Explanation, please! Tell me why, old lucky number 11379, tell me, why you inhabit the land of the living? What splendid little tricks and strategems sprang from that lovely head of yours to allow you to breath the clear Polish air? While the multitudes at Auschwitz choked - slowly - on the gas?

Well, shut my mouth, if it isn't our new literate figure from the South. Too bad I won't be around for a little lively conversation. We'd've had great time, you and I, shootin' this shit. We could've talked about - sports. Southern sports. like lynchin' niggers, or coons I think you all call 'em down there. So long cracker. See you in another life.

You wipe out six million Jews - and the world lets them escape. You want to join me in a little lynching party, Southern boy? I expect you might have a lot to teach me there.

My mother, she's very sick, you know. And I can't do anything. But I think - if only I could have got - that meat for my mother it would make her strong. So I go to the country and er… the peasants were selling ham and I buy it with the black market money and I bring it back. But it's forbidden, you know, because all the meat goes to the Germans. So I sat on the train and I hid it under my skirt, I am pretending that I am pregnant, you know? Oh I was so afraid. I was shaking. And then the German, was in front of the train and he saw me. So he come over and take under my skirt that ham and…

So they sent me Auschwitz.

No, I was sent to Auschwitz because they saw that I was afraid.Mmm. You know, when you… when you live a good life… like a saint… and then you die, that must be what they make you to drink in paradise.

Mmm. You know, when you… when you live a good life… like a saint… and then you die, that must be what they make you to drink in paradise.

Don't you see? We are dying. I longed desperately to escape, to pack my bags and flee, but I did not.

The truth does not make it easier to understand, you know. I mean, you think that you find out the truth about me, and then you'll understand me. And then you would forgive me for all those… for all my lies.

You must never promise that. No one, no one should ever promise that. Ah, the truth, ah, the truth, I don't even know what is the truth - after all these lies I have told.

So, we'll go to that farm tomorrow. But please, Stingo, don't talk about marriage and children. It's enough that we'll go down there on that farm to live... for a while.

Listen, Stingo, I'm beyond 30 years now, you know. What are you going to do with an old Polish lady like me?

I am six months in the... in here, in U.S., and so I eat more good now than in my life.

When I was a little girl, I - I remember, I lay in bed and I hear my mother downstairs playing the piano and the sound of my father's typewriter. I think no child has a more wonderful father and mother. And a more beautiful life.

I knew that - Christ had turned his face away from me - and that only a Jesus who no longer cared for me could kill those people that I love, but - leave me alive - with my shame.

My father. How can I explain how much I loved my father? My father believed that human perfection was possibility. Every night, I pray to God, to forgive me for always making a disappointment to my father. And I pray to him - to make worthy of such a great, good man. I was a grown woman. I was wholly come of age. I was a married woman when I realized that I hate my father beyond all words to tell it.

I see many, many women in your life. Many beautiful women - who adore you and that make all that love with you.