As a character in a novel by Toni Morrison, Sula is a clear representation of evil. She ruined many lives and did absolutely nothing to help others. She was also very selfish and did things that would only benefit herself. Sula was very promiscuous because she used other men and stole the husbands of many wives. She ruined many lives by doing this. There were many things that contributed to the fact that Sula was evil such as that she let Chicken Little drown, she watched her mother burn, slept with Nel’s husband, and put her own grandmother into a nursing home. Sula lets Chicken Little die and she never even tried to save him. Also, she never told anyone about Chicken Little’s death. She just left him there to rot in the sun without a proper burial. Sula was just too worried about what others would think of her if they found out about what happened with Chicken Little’s death, so she was selfish and kept Chicken Little’s death to herself. From the start, Sula was cold and she never cared enough about human life and worth. …show more content…
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. Nel is the only person that Sula ever truly cared about. Yet, she made the decision of sleeping with Jude when she could have chose to not do it in the first place. This left Nel without a husband and Nel’s children without a father to take care of them. So, Sula’s decision also impacted the next generation. Sula ruined Nel’s
From Sula's perspective, Nel and Sula were the best of friends that could share anything, even men, while Nel believed if Sula really did care, why would she hurt her like that? 8. "At Eva's house there were four dead robins on the walk. Sula stopped and with her toe pushed them into the bordering grass. (91)" Symbolism: The four dead robins symbolize the four people that died in Eva's house, Eva, Plum, Hannah, and Sula.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Their attraction toward each other grows stronger every year, eventually becoming so strong that they become one. "Their friendship was so close; they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one's thoughts from the others" (83). The positive and the negative melts together, making a perfect neutral that becomes impossible to separate or determine what's positive and what's negative. Throughout the book we see Sula and Nel as one, as do the people who know them. Even Eva at some point says to Nel, "You. Sula. What's the difference?" (168). Eva makes a reference to the perfect example of Sula and Nel being one, the time when Chicken Little drowns in the river. At that point, it seems that Sula and Nel swap personalities. Very unlike her, Sula panics and breaks down crying when she accidentally lets go of Chicken Little's hand, while Nel suddenly becomes the more collected one, calming down her other half.
This eventually leads to the whole community in the future as they also see Sula’s presence as “evil”. Although being blamed and defined as the fault for every catastrophe, Sula is not affected and lives her life without any concern. “Nel’s response to Jude’s shame and anger selected her away from Sula. And greater than her friendship was this new feeling of being needed…” (Morrison, 83).
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
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.
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
Death, love, family, and friendship, are all important things in every person’s life. They can have a lasting effect on a person, for best or for worst. Many people walk through life with someone with them, usually a spouse or a family member. During childhood, on the other hand, a friend is the person you can rely on. In the novel Sula, Nel and Sula have a very close bond.