Analysis of Sula by Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison wrote a touching story of two childhood friends who test the bonds of friendship and love. Throughout the story there are many themes that implore the reader to look more in depth at their meanings and consequences.
The main theme throughout the book is that of friendship. In the novel we are introduced to two young girls from very different backgrounds, Sula and Nel. These two girls are like two sides of one person; they know each other's thoughts, "a compliment to one was a compliment to the other." Although they appear to be best friends through much of the novel, they betray one another in the end.
As the reader follows along with the story it becomes quite obvious that Sula and Nel are polar opposites in their actions and their lifestyles. Sula depended upon Nel for sturdiness and comfort, while Nel preferred the unpredictable nature of her counterpart. They used the other's lifestyle to compensate for their shortcomings by placing themselves in the other's surroundings. When Sula visited Nel's home, she was comfortable in it, while Nel regarded the oppressive neatness with dread, but felt comfortable in it, with Sula. In the same way, Sula found comfort within the walls of the Wright home. They took solace in each other's presence. Each one finds comfort in what the other finds bothersome. Sula dislikes her disheveled house, and wishes that she could live in the clean house of Nel's. Nel likes the homeliness of Sula's house.
Abandonment plays a major role in the novel as well. This theme is evident in many different points in the story. Boy-Boy, Sula's grandfather, leaves Eva, Sula's grandmother, after a long unhealthy marriage. He left her w...
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...ple's fears of death and make them realize that it is unpredictable, many people of the Bottom die in a presentation following the annual parade. Sula and Nel are two halves of a whole. The conforming Nel searches for a sense of order in her life when she marries Jude at a young age, which in the end seems to fail in giving her a happy life. Sula, on the other hand, opposes the conventions of society and ends her life rather satisfied.
Throughout the novel there were many themes present. Ms. Morrison did a wonderful job of writing an entertaining story while providing the reader with many opportunities to look for deeper meanings and analyze the story. In looking for a deeper meaning the reader is presented with an unforgettable portrait of the effects friendship and love on a relationship.
Works Cited:
Morrison, Toni. Sula. Plume. New York: 1973.
In addition to appearance, the two women have extremely different relationships with Ethan. In order to portray each woman’s relationship with Ethan, the author uses the motif of silence.
The symbiotic nature between Sula and Nel began during their adolescent years. Sula depended upon Nel for sturdiness and comfort, while Nel preferred the unpredictable nature of her counterpart. They used the other's lifestyle to compensate for their shortcomings by placing themselves in the other's surroundings. When Sula visited Nel's home, "Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness with dread, felt comfortable in it, with Sula" (Morrison 29). In the same way, Sula found comfort within the walls of the Wright home. They took solace in each other's presence. Each one finds comfort i...
In examining the two distinct characters of Nel (Wright) Greene and Sula Peace from Toni Morrison's Sula, a unique individual soul emerges from the two women. This soul takes into account good, bad, and gray area qualities. They gray area qualities are needed because, while Nel exhibits more of the stereotypical "good" qualities than Sula, the stereotypes of good and bad don't fit the definition completely. Nel and Sula combined create a type of ying and yang soul, each half including some of the other half. While at times the two women are polar opposites of one another in point of view, they arrive at their opinions with the help of the other. The two characters need each other in order to exist to the extent that they become "two throats and one eye" (Morrison 2167). A physical example of how connected the two girls are is seen when they line up head to head forming a straight, continuous, and complete line (2124).
In the book, Beloved, by Toni Morrison and the movie, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, featuring Jack Nickolson, both share a common theme of love and loving oneself. Morrison’s character, Baby Suggs, is the source of love for her people. Similarly, Jack Nicholson’s character McMurphy tries to give the men confidence, so that they can love themselves. To be loved is to be supported, whether succeeds or fail. This support gives the confidence needed to go day to day. In both situations, deprived characters have experienced traumatic events, which have made them unsure of what love is or even feels like. The roles of McMurphy and Baby Suggs are to show these characters that despite their troubled pasts, they can make it in the world, with proper support and love.
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 of how she was raised and that she was simply a pr...
In Song of Solomon, through many different types of love, Ruth's incestuous love, Milkman and Hagar's romantic love, and Guitar's love for his race, Toni Morrison demonstrates not only the readiness with which love will turn into a devastating and destructive force, but also the immediacy with which it will do so. Morrison tackles the amorphous and resilient human emotion of love not to glorify the joyous feelings it can effect but to warn readers of love's volatile nature. Simultaneously, however, she gives the reader a clear sense of what love is not. Morrison explicitly states that true love is not destructive. In essence, she illustrates that if "love" is destructive, it is most likely, a mutation of love, something impure, because love is all that is pure and true.
The lack of support and affection protagonists, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, causes them to construct their lives on their own without a motherly figure. Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, displays the development of Sula and Nel through childhood into adulthood. Before Sula and Nel enter the story, Morrison describes the history of the Peace and Wright family. The Peace family live abnormally to their town of Medallion, Ohio. Whereas the Wrights have a conventional life style, living up to society’s expectations.The importance of a healthy mother-daughter relationship is shown through the interactions of Eva and Hannah Peace, Hannah and Sula, and between Helene Wright and Nel. When Sula and Nel become friends they realize the improper parenting they
Toni Morrison’s novel Sula is rich with paradox and contradiction from the name of a community on top of a hill called "Bottom" to a family full of discord named "Peace." There are no clear distinctions in the novel, and this is most apparent in the meaning of the relationship between the two main characters, Sula and Nel. Although they are characterized differently, they also have many similarities. Literary critics have interpreted the girls in several different ways: as lesbians (Smith 8), as the two halves of a single person (Coleman 145), and as representations of the dichotomy between good and evil (Bergenholtz 4 of 9). The ambiguity of these two characters allows for infinite speculation, but regardless of how the reader interprets the relationship their bond is undeniable. The most striking example of their connection occurs right before the accidental death of Chicken Little. In the passage preceding his death, Nel and Sula conduct an almost ceremonial commitment to one another that is sealed permanently when "the water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank" (Morrison 61):
The Notebook (Cassavetes, 2004) is a love story about a young couple named Allie Hamilton and Noah Calhoun, who fall deeply in love with each other. The Hamilton’s are financially stable, and expect for their daughter Allie to marry someone with the same wealth. Noah on the other hand works as a laborer, and comes from an underprivileged family. Throughout the film there were several negative behaviors, and interpersonal communications within the context of their relationship, which relates to chapter nine. This chapter explores relationships, emphasizing on affection and understanding, attraction, and the power of a relationship. The focus of this paper is the interpersonal conflict with Noah, Allie and her mother, Anne Hamilton.
In order to understand what changes happen to twist the views of the 2 main characters in both novels, it is important to see the outlook of the two at the beginning of the novels in comparison ...
The relationship between Nel and Sula begins during their adolescent years. Though they are complete opposites, they seem to work well with each other, depending on one another for comfort and support. The two spend almost all of their time together, learning from one another and growing as a result. They take solace in the presence of one another, finding comfort in what the other finds bothersome and using the lifestyle of the one another to compensate for their shortcomings. When Sula first visits Nel's home, "Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comf...
After several years past Sula exhibited her independence, traveling around the largest cities of the country. When she returns to the Bottom, she visits Nel. While they were young, Nel and Sula were inseparable since they grew up alongside each other. Thus, when they reunite Nel can tell something is odd with Sula. Nel ponders on how the mark grew darker giving Sula’s glance a “suggestion of startled pleasure” (96). Nel’s interpretation of Sula’s birthmark foreshadows Sula’s life in the Bottom due to her distinct lifestyle compared to Nels'. Nel follows the social norms of her community; she is a wife and a mother. Sula ignores the norms meanwhile she is traditional. Even Nel’s children view Sula as different. While both friends are catching up from their years apart, Nel’s children come up to their mother to ask why they are laughing since they are curious to find out what makes their mother laugh so boldly. Thus, Sula responds, “Tell you?” The black mark leaped” (98). Nel’s children see that the birthmark as something dark and dangerous like a threat to the family. Nel and her children's thoughts invoke Sula’s birthmark as wicked due to her different persona. The birthmark highlights a difference between Nel and Sula lifestyle and also indicates how Nel’s perspective of it showcases her restrictive social
Nel is able to express her feelings and emotions when she is with Sula, which is good because she can’t do that at home because she has to be the obedient one. They understand each other completely, they never argue or compete with each other. Their relationship is invaluable; they met each other at the time where they both needed it the most. Their friendship is not dependent on obligation, compassion, or love, but on their conjuction of sameness and autonomy. At this point they are together because they want to, not because they have to or need to be. When Sula and Nel meet it’s the time when they realize that their spot in society is disadvantage, “because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be” (Morrison, 50). They are best friends mainly because they grew up in the same neighborhood, they are the same race, gender, and age. They understand the needs of each other and each other’s problems. They experience the intimacy they were looking for in each
“Violence repeatedly usurps the space that love might hold. Commonly the fantasied antidote to psychic wounds and losses, real and imagined, love is an expected unguent, a form of medication, pain's "natural" anodyne. But Morrison takes a harsher, tougher, less romantic view of love, one fashioned from the accumulated wisdom of the ages, a wisdom infused throughout her novel”. (Mc Dowell)
There are many aspects of story that come together to create a complete narrative. A lot of the tools used by writers are intentional and serve the purpose of driving home certain aspects of the story or creating and engaging, and entertaining narrative. Toni Morrison—the author of Sula—is no different. Morrison employs many writing techniques and tools in her narrative Sula. It is important for the reader to be aware of and understand some of these narrative tools that the author uses because it allows the reader to gain a better understanding and appreciation for the narrative. In Sula a few narrative techniques that allow for the argument of women experiences to shine through are the use of a third person narrator, and gaps; throughout the story these tools allow the reader to become interested in and focus in on women experiences.