`` Sula `` By Toni Morrison

Sula by Toni Morrison highlights the themes and expectations that we have been discussing throughout the course. This story illustrates the community expectations for women. A strong basis for a thesis statement for the book Sula could be betrayal. Betrayal in the novel Sula is the central theme that changes the course of life for all characters involved. One example of betrayal happens when Sula sleeps with Nel’s husband. Another basis for a thesis statement could be a mother’s love. In Sula, Morrison revitalizes a theme that is explored in much of her writing: the nature and limits of a mother’s love. When you consider the character of Eva, she is an example of what a mother’s love is and the lengths a mother

Toni Morrison’s Sula revolves around the relationship of her two main characters, Sula and Nel. The childhood friends grow apart with age. Although it is indicated that their friendship is the most important relationship they participate in, they eventually betray each other and lead dishonest lives. Throughout the novel, we see their constantly deteriorating relationship as a result of absence of a family life. Sula is a novel about the influence family may have on the make up of someone’s personality. In particular, the novel examines the effect parents can have on their children and the conscious effort the main characters make to be unlike their mothers.

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

The book Sula by Toni Morrison is regarded as one of Morrison’s best work because of the content and structure of the book. Shadrack is an important character in the novel although his appearance in the plot is fairly brief. His significance in the novel stems from the fact that he represents one of the recurring themes of the novel, which is the need for order. Since the need to order and focus experience is an important theme, the character Shadrack illustrates the terror of chaos through his self-proclaimed day “National Suicide Day” in his small town, which portrays the importance of fear, chaos, and death in the book Sula by Toni Morrison.

In her book Sula, Toni Morrison creates a parallel between good and evil through her use of symbolism and syntax. Coinciding with her abundance of symbolism, she often times uses birds to allow her readers to know when evil is present within her novel. Usually associated with happiness and rebirth, Morrison instead chooses to details birds as portents of death or wickedness within the Bottom. This parallel between the freedom and joy of a bird and the haunting imminence of death ultimately diminishes the severity of each calamity.

Amy Lowell once said, “A man must be sacrificed now and again to provide for the next generation of men”. Sacrifice, and more specifically, human sacrifice, has arguably been around for 50 000 years, during the time early humans migrated from Africa. Many see human sacrifice as loss of life, but sacrifice is just a means of salvation for the receiver and the receiving. Equally, the idea of “sacrifice” is giving up something valuable for a religion or betterment of the world. The idea of “self-sacrifice” has reoccurring steps that the protagonists go through; loss of self-worth due to displacement, then sacrifice due to heroism, and the consequences of the said sacrifice.

In Sula, Toni Morrison questions what true friendship is by putting Nel Wright and Sula Peace’s friendship to the test. Morrison tests the phrase “opposites attract” in this novel. Nel and Sula have two different personalities yet they are able to compliment each other. They are opposites in the way that they relate to other people, and to the world around them. Nel is rational and balanced; she gets married and gives in to conformity and the town’s expectations. Sula is an irrational and transient character. She follows her immediate passions, completely care free of the feelings other people might have about her. To Nel, Sula’s return to Medallion is like “getting the use of an eye back, having a cataract

 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

As seen by many different mothers in the novel Sula by author Toni Morrison, mothers play an important part in kid’s life, shaping how they view different beliefs in the world and setting up values in their child. Every individual’s life is shaped by personal relationships they have with others. The mother and child relationship greatly affects the identity development in the kid. As seen in the racist community in the novel, the mother and kid relationship is important in the sense that the mothers and children share understanding of the sexist oppression, intertwining their lives together even more than they

Toni Morrison's Sula is a novel that has a theme about the nature of evil. The story follows the lives of two black female friends who present differing views on evil. On one hand, we have society's conventional view of evil represented by the character of Nel and also seen in the Bottom's disapproval of Sula. The other view of evil is seen through the character of Sula and through her actions, which conflict with traditional society. The friendship of Sula and Nel is how the author conveys her message about evil in the relationship. In the relationship the two different conceptions of evil mix and create an essentially neutral mixture. By looking at Nel's and Sula's friendship and the two different views of evil that they

Identity is who a person is or how they see themselves, but is this something they are born with or is it something they learn over time? Can this identity be changed? Or is it permanent once set? Identity is a major theme in Toni Morrison’s Sula. Scholars discuss the different identities that the characters possess, but tend to fail to mention character development or lack of character development. Character development or lack thereof is usually an important literary move in most writing. This development provides a deeper understanding of characters in addition to a deeper understanding of themes throughout the literature. Sula focuses mainly on the lives of Sula and Nel, which makes tracking their character development easier to track and observe their identity and sense of self. Identity is a major, yet easily overlooked theme in Sula.

Unlike so many pieces of American literature that involve and examine the history of slavery and the years of intensely-entrenched racism that ensued, the overall plot of the novel, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, does not necessarily involve slavery directly, but rather examines the aftermath by delving into African-American self-hatred. Nearly all of the main characters in The Bluest Eye who are African American are dominated by the endless culturally-imposed concepts of white beauty and cleanness to an extent where the characters have a destructive way of latently acting out their own feelings of self-hatred on others, especially other African-Americans.

The concepts of love and sacrifice are closely related and feature consistently throughout literature. To study the relationship between these ideas in more depth I have selected a range of texts over an extensive time period, these include Romeo and Juliet by Sir William Shakespeare, Titanic by James Cameron, Saint Joan by Bernard Shaw and Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson. The different eras that these texts explore will be instrumental in establishing the type of connection the two concepts hold in literature. The type of love and sacrifice varies however the underlying message is the same right through the texts, that humans in the right context will make sacrifices for love. How this is portrayed in the texts also differs yet

Morrison’s novel Sula, takes place within a black community also referred to as the Bottom in Medallion, Ohio in the 1920’s. It’s a topsy turvy world. The once-useless land that a white man jeeringly provided for a dark man is currently being transformed into a socially attractive district for white individuals. However, this reversed request isn't only an amusing setting for the novel; it is a fundamental topic of the novel, for as Morrison has stated, "Evil is as useful as good is although good is generally more interesting...living a good life is more complicated than living an evil life."(AAR) What may appear to be great at first may turn out to be to be not all that great. There are values at the societal level that though not