Sula

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Eva snatched the caps off their heads and ignored their names. She looked at the first child closely, his wrists, the shape of his head and the temperament that showed in his eyes and said, “Well. Look at Dewey. My my mymymy.” When later that same year she sent for a child who kept falling down off the porch across the street, she said the same thing. Somebody said, “But Miss Eva, you calls the other one Dewey.” The many deaths in Sula reinforce the anti-war theme, as each is linked to one or more of the novel’s centers” (31). Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. “Between Individualism and Fragmentation: American Culture and the New Literary Studies of Race and Gender.” American Quarterly 42, 1 (March 1990): 7-34.

Main Claim:“ Sula’s attentiveness to violence is expressed in terms of its abiding interest in death…one would be hard-pressed…to find a novel in which death figures more prominently…Dead not only structures the narrative but also governs it, determines the elaboration of character and event. Dead presides. And Sula endlessly presides over death” (185). These values are…particularly important thematically in her first and second novels, The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973), in which the dramatic tension arises from the community’s efforts to coexist peacefully with the threat posed to its survival by evil and madness. The pattern that madness assumes…is a loss of self-identity, a separation of the self from itself” (732).After returning from World War I, Plum becomes addicted to drugs. He does not wash. He steals and he sleeps for days. Out of love for him and sympathy for his unhappiness, Eva holds him tight one last time and then sets him on fire. She loves him enough to try to save his life as a child and enough not to watch him waste his life as an adult. Police Hannah is a diluted, more relaxed version of Eva. She teaches Sula her views on sex, but Sula takes them, along with everything else she learns from the women of her family, to a new and different level. Of the three women, Hannah has the weakest, most passive personality. Helene Sabat Wright Rekus is Sula’s father. Described as a laughing man, he dies when Sula is three years old, leaving both Hannah and Sula alone. Sula grows up without a father and this childhood loneliness provides part of the basis for her friendship with Nel. Rekus is really significant only because he is absent and therefore the Peace house is comprised mostly of women. Reverend Deal

Again, what strikes me is the scene’s combination of strangeness and familiarity: the weird games children play when they are outside and have no toys; the sense that as a young girl, I, too, played this way with, became one with, other young girls (whose names I know: Hilda, Chanda, Nyaka). Even the smallest details of the scene—the literal bits and pieces Sula and Nel throw in their merged hole—shudder between the random and the archetypal. although i do have to say, her overreliance on the word "beautiful" as a descriptor for men and boys is grating. eeeevery man is beautiful, which is statistically improbable, and it's also lazy wordsmithing in someone who has proven herself to be much better than that. A few years later, Sula is dying, and Nel briefly visits her. When Sula finally dies, she mystically remains conscious: She is outside of her body looking down at it. She realizes that death is painless, something she must tell Nel. The friendship of the two girls brings into question the central issues of the novel, namely, who is right and who is not. Nel Wright’s last name suggests this question and it is Nel who, through her experiences during her friendship with Sula, decides that she is the virtuous one. The community of the Bottom comes to agree with her conclusion.Although Sula moves between many different characters’ perspectives, it is almost entirely told from the point of view of women living in the Bottom. Often, the men in the novel can’t be “pinned down” for long: their jobs keep them away from home ( Wiley Wright), or their desire for independence leads them to abandon their families ( Jude Greene, BoyBoy, etc.). As a result, it’s no surprise that Morrison offers many insights into the lives of women and their role in their communities. Rochelle seems free-spirited and affectionate. She seems to be like Sula and Hannah, which is why both Helene and Cecile do not wish to be associated with her. Interestingly, Nel finds her grandmother attractive and young-looking. Rochelle shows no discernible affection for her daughter, but holds her granddaughter tightly when she meets her. Rudy Sula presents the complex sacrifices of motherhood without idealizing them. Each of the mothers in the text feels that she is doing what is necessary to provide for her child what she needs, and yet none of them succeed in passing on to their daughters what they actually need. The Impacts of Shame