Inverted Peace
Throughout the novel Sula, Toni Morrison constantly revisits the theme of inversion. Whether it be regarding the black and white communities or Sula herself, Morrison is able to flip the perception of the parts of the novel that a reader may have thought were concrete. As well as inversion, Morrison creates the theme of life and death, which goes hand in hand with good versus evil. Clearly, the reader can see how death impacts the characters and shapes them to be who they are at the end of their life.
In the beginning of the novel, the Bottom is a black community that is on top of a hill, overlooking a white community in the valley below it. However, as time progresses, the white community will make their way to the top of the hill and the black community to the valley. The geographical locations were inverted to match the economical and social standards. The same goes for
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We watch it shape each character as well as how they perceive the world. When Chicken Little dies, Sula and Nel are the ones responsible for it, but only Sula feels as if she is the evil one, while Nel feels she is inherently good. From this moment onwards, Sula lives her life according to that experience and that makes her be rebellious and go against the norm of society. The community learns to despise Sula and her actions, so they are relieved and gratified when she finally dies. However, "hard on the heels of the general relief that Sula's death brought a restless irritability took hold," (Morrison 153) and the community was back to lacking affection and care. Everyone thought she brought evil into the world, when in reality she brought peace and positivity. After returning back to the Bottom, it was almost as if Sula flipped a switch to create an orderly and positive community. Therefore, when she died, that switch was flipped right back to the negative and somewhat chaotic ways within the
In Toni Morrison’s Sula, gender heteronormative relationships are demonstrated in a very punishable manner. The two main characters Sula Peace, and Nel Right share a very strong, well connected friendship. The two of them are a mirror reflection of each other, with the same desires. Heteronormative institutions in the book do not seem to be stable for the most part. Hannah Peace, the single mother Sula, lives a disordered life in her household while Helene Wright belongs to a conservative and peaceful life, but her husband is never around. With the two daughters of both families being part of each other’s lives, they create a friendship that shows the privilege for female-female bonds over male-male bonds.
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
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.
It becomes more evident that the relationship between the two is turning form one that is symbiotic to one that is parasitic when Sula returns
For Sula, there is no "other" against which she can then define herself. Having rejected her community and her family, she wanders, trying somehow to define who she is. Sula turns to Shadrack, the local madman, at first because she worries that he saw what happened to Chicken Little, but then because his words truly do comfort her.
Their attraction toward each other grows stronger each year, eventually becoming so strong that they become one. “Their friendship was so close; that they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the others” (Morrison 83). Throughout this book we see Sula and Nel as one, as the people did that knew them. Even Eva at some point says to Nel, “You. Sula. What’s the difference” (Morrison 168)? Eva makes this reference to Nel and Sula being as one when she is taking about Chicken Little drowning in the river.
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.
Sula says “I did not hold my head stiff enough when I met him and so I lost it just like the dolls”(136). For a second, she became the woman that the Bottom wanted her to be. The Bottom saw Nel as good because she conformed to this standard, and saw Sula as evil because of her promiscuous and non traditional lifestyle. However, here Sula is showing that she too can show these traits that the people in the Bottom see as correct and virtuous. The fact that Sula and Nel both possess the traits that defined them as either good or evil, shows that they actually cannot be defined as either, just as Eva describes “Just alike. Both of you. Never was no difference between you two”(169). Their similarity erases the harsh line drawn by the people of the Bottom as to what good and evil looks like, making it apparent that morality is not black and white but more ambiguous. Good cannot be the direct opposite of evil, if those who represent good and evil are both good and evil themselves. The idea that Sula is evil while Nel is good is torn down in Nel’s mind as well, as near the book 's end she reflects on the death of Chicken Little. Morrison writes “All these years she had been secretly proud of her calm, controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable...Now it seemed that what she has thought was maturity, serenity, and compassion was only the tranquility that follows a joyful stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the turbulence of Chicken Little 's
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.
Although Nel thinks of herself as the "good" one and considers Sula the "bad" one, at that point you
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.
While society's view of evil is really based on the disapproval of anything that would break down way society works, Sula's view of evil is based on a different goal and she acts according to a different set of standards. In other words, "Sula was distinctly different" (118). Sula "had been looking all along for a friend" (122) and that is the goal she is really trying to reach. In sleeping with many men, she is sort of looking for a release for her "misery and...deep sorrow" (122). She is trying to find a friend who she can
The town unites social as they band together against Sula and her radical actions /"evil ways."
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.
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