Companionship in Sula Essay

The love of affection is a term that I feel I have had in my life and was easily portrayed as a need. My parents are the people in who brought me into this world. They have shown me their ways of becoming a person- by me making my own decisions, and most importantly having a walk with Christ. They may have been a pain to me through discipline, but they always have shown me their love through affection.

Through life, people experience many kinds of love. Many people often believe they love someone, when they actually do not because they may not know what the word means. As much as we want to understand love, it is still simply indescribable. As C.S. Lewis tries to explain it in his book, The Four Loves, it is still a mystery as to what love truly means. I believe in order to know what love means, one must experience it. It is quite true that went two individuals are in love with each other, they know it and can feel it. No matter how much love is studied and looked at, every individual must experience it to understand it. Along with this love lies circumstances which lead

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 does not have, 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 climax of the story is when Nel finally confronts Sula. Each girl carried demons, guilt, and frustration over their lives and their choices. Nel finally vents her anger and pain and asks for an explanation from Sula. Nel's " thighs were truly empty and dead too, and it was Sula who had taken the life from them" (Morrison pg. 110-111). After leaving Eva at the home, Nel is so upset that she heads to Sula's grave. She sadly thinks about how none of the townspeople mourned her death. Nel calls out for Sula and it is then she finally forgives her for cheating with Jude. She starts crying, for the first time in years. Nel finally finds peace by grieving for Sula. When reading that part I think it was then that she realized it was Sula who she was missing & not Jude. When reading the story I couldn’t help but feel mixed emotions for Sula. It was a combination of sadness for all

Nel and Sula’s relationship is a complex one, which allows for the novel to become incredibly in depth and driven by interesting characters. Sula’s relationships with her mother and grandmother are opposite of Nel’s relationship with her mother. This is, perhaps, why their personalities differ so much once they reach adulthood. Both become their mothers.

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

Love throughout the years has been interpreted as an intense interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). Love can also refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the emotional closeness of familial love, or to the platonic love that defines friendship, to the profound union or devotion of religious love. Love had been defined by individuals to get close to someone who have actual feelings for or deeply care about, and one that you will actually risk your life for. But now, love has been given a bad reputation because now some people are only interested in having non-intimate sex with others. People prefer temporary relationships, instead of dedicating their lives to their loved ones. These types of

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

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.

Nel follows all the stereotypes of what a woman should be. She is a simple God-fearing, church going women who marries young and is very domesticated, tending to the house and her children. Nel chooses to settle into the conventional female role of wife and mother while all throughout her life she has been careful to stick close to the "right" side of conformity. She was raised in a stable, rigid home by a family that has always been careful to keep up a socially respectable persona and an immaculately clean house. Sula on the other hand is the complete opposite. Sula gives social reforms no mind and is in a sense a wild woman that can not be tamed. She defies social conventions by never marrying, leaving her hometown to get an education and having multiple affairs with different men. The home she grew up in was in a constant state of disarray supplied by a steady stream of borders, three informally adopted boys all of whom were renamed Dewey and a line of men waiting for her openly promiscuous mother.

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

This behavior is seen when Nel attempts to recreate the relationship that she and Sula share with someone else, instead of maintaining her relationship with Sula. Now instead of Nel and Sula joined to make one person, Nel and Jude "together would make one Jude." (Page 83) Another of Nel’s negative qualities was how dependent she was on what other thought of her. The only reason Nel ended her relationship with Sula was because she felt she needed to be "needed by someone who saw her singly." (Page 84). Initially this statement appears to state that Nel wishes to become more of an individual, when in actuality it is only further proof that she is completely dependent on what others think of her.Nel’s want to be an individual while still

I met her two years ago and we did not have much to say at that time. Little did I know that she would later steal my heart and become an intimate part of my life. As the saying goes "there is someone for anyone at any time in this life" and I was about to find out that this saying was so true. I have had a wall built around me and my defense was as a stronghold to protect myself from all the relationships that have come and gone over the years. I thought that I was meant to be alone in this old life and happiness was forever gone from me. This wonderful woman I am speaking of is Mary Doe, and the joy she has given me has revived my hope and faith that I may have finally found love and peace within. She has made me feel like I am a child

In this world, to live a life, everybody needs someone to always be there by their side. It is not possible to stay alone and be happy at the same time. We can lower our pain by sharing it, or increase our happiness if we can share our happiness with others. People stand with us, share our feelings, bond with us and become a part of our life. We can’t imagine the life without the people who matter the most to us. Some we meet with the needs, some meet with destiny and some stays from the very first day of our life. These connections and commitment of being there make relationships. There is different steps, ways and views of every relation. Trust, love and respect are three different ways to show the importance of our relationship.