The book “Sula” was written by Toni Morris, and it focuses on black families who live in the Ohio Hills above the town of Medallion Valley, which was also known as the "Bottom. The main characters in the book are Nel and Sula; Sula is about adventure, curiosity, and hated by the black community of the Bottom. Sula had a birthmark over her eyes and it is seen differently by different characters. For instance, Shadrack sees it as a tadpole, Nel sees it as a stemmed rose, while Jude sees it as a snake. Each character is trying to find their own identity in the story, and the way that each character views Sula’s birthmark symbolizes who they really are.
The first character introduced in the book, Sula, was a veteran named Shadrack or private.
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He created the holiday as a way of getting over the fear of death. He suggested that if the people in the town could take one day of the year to celebrate the National Holiday day, the rest of the year would be safer. Another thing about Shadrack is he was the only black person in the Bottom that would say or do anything and nobody could go after him, he “Walked about with his penis out…peed in front of ladies and girl children, the only black who could curse white people and get away with it, who shouted and shook in the street” (Morris 62). Shadrack and Sula first met when Chicken Little drowned in the water. At that moment, she was looking for help when she went to Shadrack’s home, he saw her crying and replied by saying “Always” (Morris 63). Sula was disturbed by his comment and felt that he knew everything that happened. He did not see it that way, but he thought she needed some confirmation that she can count on him in a case of anything. She was the only person that ever visited Shadrack. When Sula died the only thing Shadrack could remember about Sula was the birthmark over her eyes. He referred to it as a “tadpole” (Morris 156). The word Tadpole could be a transformation …show more content…
Both would look after one another, learn things from the other person, they find happiness whenever they meet. When Sula was twelve, her birthmark was described as a stemmed rose, “Sula was a heavy brown with large, quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose” (Morrison, 52). The birthmark as a stemmed rose symbolized strength, because of its thorns. For example, Sula shows her strength to the four Irish white boys who always terrorize them after school by “slashing her finger” (Morris, 54). At first, the rose is beautiful and soft, but it becomes a torn for Nel after she loses her husband, because he cheats on her best friend Sula. Sula’s birthmark also to get darker and darker as times goes back. Morrison says “The Birthmark was to grow darker as the years passed, but now it was the same shade as her gold-flecked.” A stemmed rose could also be interpreted as a battle within itself. Sula and Nel battle with themselves to find their identities of whom they really are. Nellie thinks she is the perfect one in the story, but later realized she is no different from Sula. Nel has joined the people of the town and stop talking to Sula after her husband cheated on her and left the
Only two characters, Nel and Shadrack, maintain a static interpretation of Sula’s birthmark, revealing their alienation from society at large. Nel’s unchanging perception of Sula’s birthmark as a stemmed rose highlights her own need for consistency.
Although Nel thinks of herself as the "good" one and considers Sula the "bad" one, at that point you
Sula wanted nothing to do with a husband that would betray her and cheat on her and come home and just be horribly mean to her. I think the biggest emotional obstacle Sula endured was watching her mother burn to death. Sula went through an obstacle course of emotions and relationships. Poor choices were made, which led to her ultimate demise, however, her demise was her own choice. It was pretty ironic how the dislike for Sula brought the community together. With their dislike for Sula they forgot about the problems they had with each other.
Her mother and grandmother, who obviously favor her brother, essentially ignore Sula. Hannah, her mother, is a very sexual woman who enjoys the company of many men in town to the disapproval of Sula. Because of her mother’s actions, Sula views her with an indifferent and callous sense of hostility. Still, Sula reacts in a negative way when hears her mother say, “‘I just don’t like her’” in reference to her daughter. (57) The difference between loving someone and liking someone is made clear here. It develops the idea of a mother’s ambivalent love. When a child is aggravating, it can be frustrating to love them. But for Hannah, she simply does not like the person Sula is becoming. This realization, for Sula, removes her from
Despite being presented as opposites of good and evil, Nel and Sula are actually quite similar, as both Nel and Sula posses the traits that defined the other, effectively blurring the lines between good and evil. As young girls, Nel pushed herself to become friends with Sula in the first place as “Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comfortable in t with Sula, who loved it and would sit on the red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time… As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s wooly house”(29). As a child, Nel yearned to be free and independent, and to be her own individual self separate from who her mother expects her to be. Sula however already lives this life of living in a non-traditional home and
she had” (Morrison 83). In the book Sula by Toni Morrison, Nel represents the women who follow all the social conventions and normative expectations. Nel and many women in our society are taught how to survive in this patriarchal society and their desperation for freedom and equality are rubbed down when they were young. On the other hand, the main character Sula is a self-defined woman. Sula is a representation of extreme individualism since she remains single and has sexual relations with countless married and single men. She also sends her grandmother to an elderly home and does not care about the feelings of the people around her. Morrison uses Sula to
Georgiana had always lived with the birthmark, and was quite fond of its charm. Many people in the town believe it was a fairy’s handprint left to sway all hearts; to them the mark only magnified her appeal. The mark’s charm had rarely been questioned by anyone other than the jealous women of the town, and its peculiar nature had once intrigued Aylmer and amplified his attraction to Georgiana. He begged for her hand in marriage, but soon after they were wed, he queried whether Georgiana had ever considered having the birthmark removed. She was hurt by the implication that the mark depreciated her and grew upset with her husband. As time passed, Aylmer continued to stare at the mark, unable to keep his eyes from wandering to it. This continued until Georgiana was no longer able to ignore the way his eyes were always fixated on this sole imperfection, the crimson hand that kept him up at night and plagued his dreams. She asked Aylmer to remove the mark, or take her life because she no longer wanted to live if she had to live with the mark. She preferred death to the harsh scrutiny from her husband.
The relationship first starts to take a turn for the worst when Sula accidentally kills a local boy named Chicken Little, by throwing him into the river. The town never finds out who is responsible for his death, mostly due to the girls silence. Though Nel played no roll in Chicken Little?s death, she stands by Sula and tells no one about what she saw that day at the river. At his funeral, ?[the two] held hands and knew that only the held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth, the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever? (Morrison 66). Nel?s silence in support of Sula is the first instance when Sula takes advantage of Nel, relying on her in order to survive.
During this time of their separation, the strength of their friendship appears evident. They both long to still be friends, to talk again. However, Nel sees this event as a true betrayal of friendship from Sula, while Sula sees what happened as casual and not a big deal.
After her marriage, Nel becomes a conventional, settled down woman. Her life when Sula is not around is much like her life in the “oppressive neatness”(Morrison 29) in her mother’s house. She loses her true unique self after Sula is gone. She realizes this when Sula comes back to Medallion. “Nel felt new, soft and new. It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping
The novel Sula, is a work which contrasts the lives of its two main characters Nel and Sula. They appear, on the surface, to be the epidemy of binary opposites but this is in actuality their underlying bond. The differences in their personalities complement one another in a way that forges an almost unbreakable alliance. Sula is compulsive and uncontrollable while her counterpart, Nel, is sensible and principled. To prove Nel human by subscribing to the theory that a human is one who possess both good and bad traits, one must only look at how she interacts with Sula, here both negative and positive traits are evident.Nel’s "good" traits obviously come to the forefront when looking at her character. One might say this is a result
The archetype of Georgiana can be seen as the perfect women, however, her birthmark acts as a symbol of imperfection and mortality that keeps her from fully pleasing her husband. Georgiana is described as beautiful and perfect except for one flaw, the birthmark. “It was the fatal flaw of humanity which Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain” (Hawthorne 220). The hand-shaped birthmark can be seen as her being touched by nature and acts as a symbol of imperfection and mortality in humans. The symbol of the birth-mark standing for mortality can be seen again towards the end
Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne during the American Renaissance, the short story “The Birth-Mark” details the events of a brilliant scientist and natural philosopher named Aylmer who obsesses about his wife Georgiana’s birthmark in the shape of a tiny hand on her left cheek. The symbol of the birthmark causes the plot to advance in the story, as Aylmer is compelled by this red mark to act upon his emotions. Aylmer views his wife’s birthmark as an imperfection in her virtually flawless beauty and as a result, attempts to it via a potion that he strongly believes cannot fail. His interpretation of the birthmark creates conflict in the story, which is shaped by the symbolic meaning that he attributes it to. Aylmer’s failure to accept his wife’s appearance for who she is leads to misunderstandings, pain, and ultimately, death.
Here again, one seems the way that Morrison manipulates language and its meaning in that what Shadrack doesn't say are just as significant as what he does say. Shadrack makes Sula a promise- "Always." Morrison writes, "...he tried to think of something to say to comfort her, something to stop the hurt from spilling out of her eyes. So he had said 'always,' so she would not have to be afraid..." (Morrison 157) This promise, which conveys to Sula a sense of her own permanence, serves to take away from her two essential components of a healthy conscience-fear and compassion.
Unlike all the other women in the story, Sula is tough and does not let others interfere with her. She lives her life by her own rules and standards. The people in the town notice that "except for a funny-shaped finger and that evil birthmark, she was free of any normal signs of vulnerability" (115). Again, the rose symbolized Sula's growth and carefree way of life.