Summary Of Saving Sourdi

Although Nel thinks of herself as the "good" one and considers Sula the "bad" one, at that point you

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

This results in her creating scenarios in her head where she can bring her sister back. When Nea gets a call from a crying Sourdi, Nea automatically assumes that her “old husband” is abusing her. She doesn’t even think to consider that it might have been something else that happened. She calls Duke and drives all the way to her sister’s place, not even telling Duke the whole story because, somewhere in the back of her head, she knows that she’s overreacting. She knows that if she tells Duke the real reason she’s going he won’t allow her to go. This shows how much she wants Sourdi to come back. She will make up any crazy scenario and try to make sense of it if it meant in the end she got her sister back. Duke and Nea reached Sourdi’s house in six hours. When she went inside Sourdi’s house and saw bruises on her face, she didn’t even think to ask her sister what happened and went straight to the conclusion that her husband his her. This led to Duke also believing that Sourdi’s husband beat her and he punched him in the face. When everything calmed down, Sourdi explained how her husband did not beat her. “An economy-size box of baby-wipes had fallen off the closet shelf and struck her full in the eye,” (142). Sourdi explained that she was crying over the phone because she was having another baby. It was a difficult decision for her and she didn’t know what to do so she just needed her

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

After getting married, Sourdi and Mr. Chhay moved a state away to Iowa, putting an even larger strain on Sourdi and Nea’s relationship. Sourdi did not want to get married to Mr. Chhay as she was still in love with Duke, but it wasn’t in Sourdi to fight back and go against her mother’s wishes— something Nea would have easily done. Nearly two years after Sourdi got married, Nea picks up a call from Sourdi one evening

Sourdi is the prettier and more desirable sister. Chai highlights the incongruity of the sisters’ looks by solely depicting Sourdi’s beauty. By depicting Sourdi as a China Doll so early in the story when the two men are harassing her in the family’s restaurant, Chai sets us up to believe that she needs defending and isn’t strong enough to do it herself. Nea thoroughly believes that is her role in life. As the plot progresses, however, it is easy to see that Sourdi is in fact quite strong and unbreakable.

In chapter 1919, Nel’s mother, Helene and her family are introduced. Her grandmother raised Helene to her very best unlike her mother Rochelle, who was a creole whore and did not take care of her. Helene later married a seaman named, Wiley Wright. This marriage in the story was a somewhat of a success in terms of a heteronormative institution because they had raised Nel making her “obedient and polite” (Morrison 23). Unlike Helene, Sula’s mother, Hannah Peace, never really gave orders and directions to Sula, and Nel enjoyed this while Sula enjoyed staying at Nel’s tidy and neat home. Before Eva peace gave birth to her children and took in the Dewey brothers, she had married a man named, BoyBoy. Their marriage was a disaster as it was filled with unfaithfulness, lack of

During the story, Chai paints a picture of two extremely close sisters who have been put to the test. The pair has been relocated, put to work, and expected to mature quickly in their harsh new world. Nea is the narrator of the story, and she shares: ”We used to say that we’d run away, Sourdi and me.” (72) The sisters would whisper their secrets back and forth at night, and lock themselves in the bathroom together and hide away together. As children the girls were inseparable but soon the age difference comes between them. Sourdi finds comforts in her first romance with a dishwasher, Duke, and slowly but surely Nea is left by the wayside. This distance is increased when Mr. Chhay is introduced and Nea quickly realizes that her sister is being severed from her life: “It was the beginning of the end. I should have fought harder then. I should have stabbed this man, too.” (75)

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

In the short story “Saving Sourdi” it shocked me at first to know that some marriages are still arranged here today in America. I had to read the story back because to understand the struggle Nea and her family has from moving from the homeland to America trying to attain the American Dream. Nea’s and her sister had a great relationship while they were growing up but because Sourdi is older and more mature she harsh realities of the world before Nea. Nea is to young to understand such changes in the world because from a young age she was promised happiness but lost hope as she moved from place to place. Having a sister I can relate to Nea anxiously want to drive to her sister house in the middle of the night to make sure she is alright.

Because of the sexual confidence Hannah Peace has, Sula must disguise her difference, just like her grandmother Eva had too. Eva’s drastic measures were repeated by Sula an act of survival and denial of powerlessness and vulnerability. Nel and Sula are regularly picked on by the same group of boys, causing Sula to take matter into her own hands. At one point, Sula takes out a knife and cuts off part of her finger saying, “ ‘If I can do that to myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?’ ” (54-55). This severe act if Sula’s moment of self-recognition of her connection to her grandmother Eva. Here, Sula realizes that she has to fight against her own vulnerability, and establish her identity, hereby following her grandmother Eva’s example. Though this moment shows Sula’s inner strength, it can never disguise her enough of being different from the rest of her community. Just as Eva and Hannah, Sula continues the unpreventable, mature line of breaking past the typical gender roles of the time. Eva’s overly independent attitude and removal from caring and mothering a daughter correctly, leaves her daughters with unlearned, societal caretaking skills. This results in Sula’s highly inappropriate and unnecessary act of clumsy caretaking within her relationship with Nel. Yet, it is understandable because Sula has never been taught normal and conventional means for problem solving. The denial of motherly love from

Mothers and daughters often struggle to maintain a relationship. In Particular, Nel 's family Cecile, Helene, Nel and Rochelle. Helene neglects her grandmother, Cecile who takes her away from her mother as a baby and raised her in a strict catholic household. A couple