Characteristics Of A Parent Or A Family Member

Chapter 5 of Freakonomics, What Makes a Perfect Parent, raises the question, “how much do parents really matter?” This is a very interesting question with a number of different answers. Steven Levitt, the author, goes into great detail to answer this question. Right of the start, Levitt mentions, “Clearly bad parenting matters a great deal” (Levitt, Dubner p.154). He uses the correlation between abortion and crime, making the argument that unwanted children will be worse off in life versus other children who are accepted into their parents’ lives and loved. Levitt raises yet another question asking how influential are those loving and accepting parents on the outcome of their child. Interesting enough, genes are responsible for about fifty percent of a child’s characteristics and personality but what is responsible for the other fifty percent? Judith Harris, author of The Nature Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do, argued that peers are more influential on a child than parents are. Levitt challenges her position and mentions that parents are usually the ones responsible for deciding a children’s peers. For instance, parents are the ones who choose what neighborhood to live, where to send their child to school and strive to find their child the right friend group.

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.

who always been deprived of father-figure, she feels the need to acquire attention from boys in

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

She too sleeps with only the husbands of other women. Sula has never witnessed a healthy relationship between a man and a woman. This is regarded by the community as terrible. Sula uses the men she sleeps with for pleasure, taking no consideration as to how the men feel. She refuses to have such patriarchal relationships as Hannah did. Hannah may indeed have received pleasure from the men she slept with but she remained the submissive participant in her relations. "Hannah rubbed no edges, made no demands, made the man feel as though he were complete and wonderful just as he was- he didn’t need fixing..." (p 2012). Sula, on the other hand, has a need to feel in control right down to the mechanics of her affairs. "And there was the utmost irony and outrage in lying under someone, in a position of surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and limitless power." (p2048). She not only took sex from men as pleasure, but sought out to claim power over them. "Sula was trying them out and discarding them without any excuse the men could swallow." (p2044). This made the women upset and furthered their hatred for Sula. Sula had power by sleeping with these very same men who held power over submissive wives. The town regards all of Sula’s actions as evil. They called her a "roach" and a "bitch", but above that spread a nasty rumor that she slept with white men. "There was nothing lower she could do, nothing filthier." (p2043). Though it is mentioned in

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

Since they are taught at such a young age, they do not have the critical thinking skills and they automatically believe the ideas that their parents taught them. For example, in Sula, Nel is under the control of her mother. After she sees her mother places herself in an inferior position and smiles to the men on the train, she realizes that she does not want to be like her mother. Nel says, “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me” (Morrison 28). She wants to be wonderful, unique and free. However, since she is too young, she cannot persist her dream of freedom under the control of her mother and she utterly gives up. Morrison writes, “Under Helene’s hand the girl became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground” (Morrison 18). She finally becomes one of the “normal” women who does follow all the social conventions and loses her sense of self. She cares about how other people and the society think instead of how she feels. She marries a man and their marriage is not based on love, but instead, it is aimed to satisfy the normative expectation of their community. Therefore, one of the reasons why Nel loves Sula is because Sula succeeds in being unique, free and ignores all the social conventions that she does not like agree

Sula dislikes her disheveled house, and wishes that she could live in a household as clean as that of Nel. Sula?s positive view of Nel?s home challenges Nel to see it in a new light, teaching her to appreciate. This concept stays current throughout the early years of their relationship, each opening the other?s eyes to new idea and ways of living and as they do their friendship grows stronger. The two become practically inseparable, living completely symbiotically and depending on each other for everything. However, this relationship is destined to change.

“I know my mom and dad love each other but their marriage is not healthy and has not been for a long time.” “They don’t even sleep in the same room”. (personal communication, 08/03/2013). Selyna states she feels like her mother is depressed, but would never admit to it. Selyna and her sister Stephanie are very close to their mother. Selyna’s brother Sergio is gay which has caused the greatest conflict with his father and has resulted in a poor relationship with conflict and discord. Selyna states “When my brother came out it was the most stress I have ever seen my family endure it was very hard for all of us. I have never stopped loving my brother and was able to look past it, but my father never has and I don’t think he ever will” (personal communication, 08/03/2013). Selyna describes her relationship with her brother Sergio and her sister Stephanie as close and has depicted on the genogram as extremely close or fused.

Being oppressed by her mother, Nel has an attraction to Sula’s carefree environment, which, unlike her own lacks any oppression. Likewise, Sula has an attraction to Nel’s peaceful and orderly environment. They both desire something that the other has, and that’s where such a strong attraction comes from. Together, they are perfect. Nel finds in Sula the youthfulness and the fun she’s missing, and Sula finds order and stability in Nel.

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

She was just standing there and watching the women that raised her burn. She chose to do nothing when she could have saved Hannah. It doesn’t matter how old Sula was at the time, her love for Hannah should have been a motivation to do something to save her. Sula’s cold hearted act of watching her mother burn, means that she didn’t love her mother at all. Sula also slept with Nel’s husband.

Sula as the main character in which the book is named, would be expected to have quite the character development as the story progresses, but this is not how the story progresses. Sula, as a child, receives little attention from her mother and grandmother (Reddy). This forces her to learn how to care for herself as well as become independent at young age, thus her childhood being cut short. Sula’s mother, Hannah, has a well know reputation for sleeping with all of the men of the Bottom (Reddy). Although Sula disapproves of her mother’s tendencies, her mother’s actions make their mark on Sula’s personality which we see later in the book.

I was fortunate to come from a large family that has close bonds and collectivist ideals. My parents divorced when I was nine years old and unlike most children of divorce, my father had primary custody over all of the children. Many of my personal values and beliefs are extensions of lessons I received from my father. I believe that most of my academic grit is a gift I obtained from my mother. Growing up, my siblings and I were raised with the idea that everything we do reflect backs on our family. In other words, if I was to accomplish something honorable, the deed would reflect that I come from an honorable family.

Eva, Hannah and Sula, all three are tied with blood knots and thus Sula follows the footsteps of her mother.Like Nancy Chodorow put it in “THE REPRODUCTION OF MOTHERING: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER”. She argues that the mother-daughter relationship structures the female personality and relational capacities. All the three women are emotionally weak when it comes to the relation of mother and daughter. There is no bond between them which is very well seen in the novel “Sula watches her mother burning not because she was paralyzed but because she was interested”(pg 78)