The Significance of the Character Shadrack in the Novel Sula by Toni Morrison

Identity, the reality of being who or what a being is, however who establishes that? A novel by Toni Morrison, Sula, is a magnificent story about identity. Sula is about two inseparable young ladies “Nel and Sula” trying to find their place in this world,though as they age, they distance. What makes you, you? Who or what gives you a place in this world? How does one know if they have an identity or not? Your identity is established by you, however what if you aren’t yourself, but a part of someone else.

    Fear plays an important role in Shakespeare's tragic play, Hamlet. Within the play, the main character, Hamlet, attempts to overcome his fear and fulfill his father's revenge. Hamlet's apprehension toward death prevents him from carrying out the murder of Claudius. Although confrontation with death is avoided for as long as possible, Hamlet comes to recognize his weakness, and faces this anxiety.

In the short “Sula” by Toni Morrison, we watch two young girls grow up in a small town, the Bottom, and become unlikely friends. These girls, Sula and Nel, are as different as night and day, yet they are inseparable when they were young. They were only separated when Nel gets married to Jude, and Sula leaves the Bottom for ten years. These girls choose different lives, and each life has different connotations attached.

In the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison we follow the life of Sula Peace through out her childhood in the twenties until her death in 1941. The novel surrounds the black community in Medallion, specifically "the bottom". By reading the story of Sula’s life, and the life of the community in the bottom, Morrison shows us the important ways in which families and communities can shape a child’s identity. Sula not only portrays the way children are shaped, but also the way that a community receives an adult who challenges the very environment that molded them. Sula’s actions and much of her personality is a direct result of her childhood in the bottom. Sula’s identity contains many elements of a strong, independent feminist

Two young girls, coalescing on a grass-laden field while lying on their stomachs, dig a hole in unspoken harmony. A picture of youth and innocence, this scene depicts an innocuous moment which the two girls share as a result of their juvenescence--or does it? In Toni Morrison 's Sula, this scene, among others, appears at first to be both irrelevant to the novel’s underlying theme and out of place with regard to the rest of the plot. Yet, when analyzed further, the literary devices that Morrison uses in these scenes bring readers to a vastly different conclusion. These scenes serve as windows into the mind of Morrison and even into the larger themes present in the text. So, perhaps two girls sharing a seemingly casual experience is not as

Fear can control a lot of things, and can make people do some things they wouldn’t normally think about. It can pull people together, or push them apart. In Lord of the Flies it pushes the boys apart. But in The Village it pulls them together. In both cases, the fear wasn’t real. The beast from LOTF and “those they don’t speak of” in The Village. Fear plays a big role in both of these. I believe fear is an easy thing to overuse and control people with, in LOTF and The Village they use fear as a way of power and controlment.

Fear is defined as an “unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. The effects of fear can cause us to become a totally different person. In the book, The Lord of the Flies, many of the characters went from innocent young child to a brutal savage. “This was a savage whose image refused to blend with the innocent pictures of a boy in shorts and shirt” (Golding 183). The boys arrived on the island looking like proper British boys from a civilized place, and left the island

Racism and sexism are both themes that are developed throughout the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison. The book is based around the black community of "The Bottom," which itself was established on a racist act. Later the characters in this town become racist as well. This internalized racism that develops may well be a survival tactic developed by the people over years, which still exists even at the end of the novel. The two main characters of this novel are Nel Wright and Sula Peace. They are both female characters and are often disadvantaged due to their gender. Nel and Sula are depicted as complete opposites that come together to almost complete one another through their once balanced

One specific story told in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, describes fear in a different aspect. The story describes a certain environment, specifically the mountainous jungle, causing fear amongst a team of soldiers. It tells of six men who are signed to listen for anything suspicious but they end up hearing chamber music and eventually they panic and request air strikes (68-72). Instead of fearing death or enemies, they fear the Vietnam land but they also fear quietness and the unknown. The idea of being able to hear something but not knowing or seeing what it is allows the audience to understand that being a soldier in the Vietnam War meant not knowing exactly what is happening but still taking action. One other instance that included fear was when Curt Lemon feared getting his teeth cleaned by the dentist and even got a tooth pulled out for no real reason (83-84). Lemon’s fear of embarrassment was far bigger than the fear he had of the dentist. Lemon cannot fear a simple dentist checkup because he is a Vietnam soldier who should fear far worse things than a dentist. This story shows the audience how war shapes Lemon’s fear by allowing us to question what exactly these soldiers fear. We may wonder if Lemon’s simple fear of the dentist is because he doesn’t fear harsher things such as death because he may be accustom to the war

Fear is a very powerful thing. It can be used to manipulate, or in other words shape the identities of others. Someone who used this ability to his advantage was Marshall Herf Applewhite.Marshall Herf Applewhite utilized fear to shape the identities of his followers by forcing belief under false pretences, forcing a way of life, and forcing suicide.

 Organisms in nature rely on one another for their well being.  However, sometimes those organisms become greedy and decide to take in the relationship, instead of sharing with their symbiotic partner.  Through this action, it takes on parasitic characteristics.  In Toni Morrison's work, Sula, Sula Peace and Nel Wright demonstrate how a symbiotic relationship goes awry.  When one partner betrays the other, by taking instead of giving, the other partner suffers.  Nel and Sula's relationship suffers because Sula unfortunately takes actions that lead to partaking in a parasitic relationship where she begins to wither away.  Nel refuses the parasitic lifestyle and

Authors developed the canon in order to set a standard of literature that most people needed to have read or to have been familiar with. The works included in the canon used words such as beautiful, lovely, fair, and innocent to describe women. The canonical works also used conventional symbols to compare the women to flowers such as the rose and the lily. Thomas Campion depicts the typical description of women in his poem, "There is a Garden in Her Face." He describes the women by stating, "There is a garden in her face/ Where roses and white lilies grow,/ A heavenly paradise is that place,/ Wherein all pleasant fruits do flow" (1044-5). The roses and lilies are used to portray beautiful, frail

The reader starts to see that unlike other people Huck becomes more and more selfless and is willing to give himself up for other people. On the other hand, society is messed up in so many ways, for example like when Huck is placed to live with his father and his prejudice rant show how most people during this time feel about blacks. He yells to Huck that the government has done wrong by letting this one black man from Ohio have nice clothes and belonging and allowing him to vote. Then, when Huck visits the town that tried to kill Colonel Sherburn, the reader sees how savage and absurd people can be when confronted with difficult situations, their first instinct is to “’Tear down the

There is one of most obvious cases when females look into their society and condition of women in her society, she may understand that marriage is the process when men take control over women, and women's only job is taking care of the house and producing children. As a result, women think that if she married, she will become like a slave to a man, and most of her freedom will be restricted by her husband. This condition has been found in Sula’s personality when she refuses to marry and be a mother. One day When Eva asked Sula to marry, she refused to marry and be a mother, and her response was " I don't want to make someone, I want to make myself"(Morrison). Despite of the limitations from her community and family Sula “doesn’t put any limits

Attitudes and sentiments refer to the thoughts that people may have towards a particular person or crop of individuals. There are values at the societal level that though not written, are known among the members of a community. Doing the opposite of these values often raises eyebrows among the societal members or even eliciting mixed reactions given that people may have differing opinions towards the same. The other thing is that with an entrance of a new group in a particular region, change is inevitable and people often tend to conform to the behaviors of the newcomers within the tune of time. The analysis of Toni Morrison’s Sula shall help in pointing out the attitudes and sentiments of the members of this community towards hardships, outside influence, and even Sula.