In Sula, there was no other character that had a greater impact in the narrative like Eva Peace. Eva, who is one of the few characters that survived Toni Morrison’s creative onslaught of murders, faced many challenges and played various roles in the novel. In Sula, Eva is seen as a self-sacrificing mother who goes to the greatest extents to save her children. Her self-sacrifice is what saved her children while they were young. She amputated her own leg to feed and provide for them. Eva is also seen as a person who nurtures life and also takes it. In Sula, Eva, in a sense, becomes a mother to many individuals. She cares for them and feeds them just like they were her own. She also acts selflessly toward her youngest, Plum, who becomes a heroin addiction. She lights Plum on fire not because of spite, but because she loves him too much to see him as a drug addict. What is so significant about Eva’s character is that the reader must thoroughly analyze Eva to understand the rationality of her actions.
One way Eva had a great impact in Sula was how she was able to preserver as a single mother. When Eva’s husband, BoyBoy leaves her, Eva is left with nothing and three mouths to feed. Morrison states; “Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets and no idea of what or how to feel” (32). This created a sense of urgency in Eva, she was desperate for food for her children. This desperation leads Eva to beg her neighbor, Mrs. Suggs, for food and milk, Morrison writes; “People were willing to help, but Eva felt she would soon run her welcome out…” (32). Having no other source for food, Eva was compelled to leave her children with Mrs. Suggs so she can find a way earn money. Eighteen months later, Eva returns to The Bottom with one leg and a pocketbo...
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... can’t bear the thought of him dying an unfitting death. Morrison states; “[Eva] rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it into the bed where the kerosene soaked Plum lay in snug delight” (47). Eva acted out of love for her son, and gave Plum a quick death rather than a slow and painful life from his addictions.
What is interesting about Eva is that the choices she makes may seem irrational or cruel, but it is important to understand her reasoning. When her children are very young, she leaves them because she knows that if she does not earn money they will die. Eva resorts to physically sacrificing her leg in order to provide for her children. She also knew that Plum was too far gone in his drugs to be saved. It is Eva’s concern and selflessness for the lives of her children and others that give Eva an impact in Sula.
Through Eva’s eyes, she sees the world as it should be not how others want it to be. She is deeply saddened by watching the girls, SGs, dangle above the pond in their backyard. Eva is pure in the sense that she has not been tainted by the alluring things wealth can by, her humanity is still intact. She cares for the SGs and is intelligent enough to realize they are more than lawn ornaments. Each SG comes from a different country, “Tami (Laos), Gwen (Moldova), Lisa (Somalia), Betty (Philippines)”, all coming from improvised countries hoping to provide a more stable life for their loved one’s back home. Eva is able to see the facts for what they are while her family and the Torinis simply view the SGs as
Sula begins with serious questions within the mind of a reader. Many motifs in the book challenge social structure, and what it means to be human. Pride is apparent within the plot, because dramatic characters have pride, or belief in who they are. Characters are meant to be dramatized to provoke audience emotion. The characters may change throughout a play, but they will be prideful in their change. Toni Morrison puts the reader into the eyes of a character, allowing the reader to become the character. This then leads to the realization of the questions, Is it good or bad to be prideful, and does the characters pride create a bond between the audiences? Sula brings about many occurrences of pride either being good, or pride being bad. Two examples are Eva Peace's decision to kill Plum, and Sula's return to the bottom. Before the occurrences are determined as good or bad, there must first be a definition of what constitutes something as being good, or bad. Kraut and Richard wrote of the ethnic and moral virtue, "First, I believe that there are these two relationships: being good for someone and being bad for someone; furthermore, some things are related in these ways; and in favorable circumstances, we can know that these relationships hold" (pg.31). The philosophers stated there are things in the world that are considered good, or bad. Relationships will hold true due to the experiences of defining something as good or bad. Before an occurrence can be established as good, or bad, it must first be compared. "To call someone a good chess player is to compare her with other chess players; it is to say she is good-in-relation-to-them" (Kraut,Richard pg. 32). The comparison allows an occurrence to form relation to other occurrences. ...
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):
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
Previously, the narrator has intimated, “She had all her life long been accustomed to harbor thoughts and emotions which never voiced themselves. They had never taken the form of struggles. They belonged to her and were her own.” Her thoughts and emotions engulf her, but she does not “struggle” with them. They “belonged to her and were her own.” She does not have to share them with anyone; conversely, she must share her life and her money with her husband and children and with the many social organizations and functions her role demands.
In the novel Sula, there were other important characters besides Sula. The character in this book I would like to focus on most is Eva Peace. Eva is a woman who has a disability but remains strong, and this will be the focus of this paper since it wasn’t focused on so much in the book.
Looking back on the death of Larissa’s son, Zebedee Breeze, Lorraine examines Larissa’s response to the passing of her child. Lorraine says, “I never saw her cry that day or any other. She never mentioned her sons.” (Senior 311). This statement from Lorraine shows how even though Larissa was devastated by the news of her son’s passing, she had to keep going. Women in Larissa’s position did not have the luxury of stopping everything to grieve. While someone in Lorraine’s position could take time to grieve and recover from the loss of a loved one, Larissa was expected to keep working despite the grief she felt. One of the saddest things about Zebedee’s passing, was that Larissa had to leave him and was not able to stay with her family because she had to take care of other families. Not only did Larissa have the strength to move on and keep working after her son’s passing, Larissa and other women like her also had no choice but to leave their families in order to find a way to support them. As a child, Lorraine did not understand the strength Larissa must have had to leave her family to take care of someone else’s
Toni Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, a novel whose popularity and worth earned her the Nobel Prize in literature the first ever awarded to a black female author. Born in the small town of Larain, Ohio, in 1931, to George and Ramah Willis Wofford, Morrison's birth name is Chloe Anthony Wofford (Gates and Appiah ix). Morrison describes the actions of her central character in Beloved, as: the ultimate love of a mother; the outrageous claim of a slave. In this statement we find an expression of the general themes of Morrison's mainly naturalistic works. One of these is the burden of the past or history (i.e. slavery and being black in a predominantly white controlled society). Another is the effect on the individual and society from distinctions of race, gender and class. A further theme still is the power of love, be it positive or negative it is a powerful transforming presence in her characters and novels, one through which many find redemption and freedom.
In today’s society, there is a considerably high value on motherhood. Mothers teach their kids important aspects of life and typically pass down their own values to their children. It only makes sense emphasize the importance of motherhood. This is not the case in the novel Sula. In the community of The Bottom, motherhood is not highly valued and has a negative connotation which is shown through Eva’s experiences as a mother and is passed down through her family.
They began to lose touch with each other. Nel got married and Sula left because she claimed there was nothing left for her in the Bottom, since Nel is a devoted mother and wife. Sula felt as if Nel was putting her on the sidetrack instead of the main road, which hurt her a little. According to society every woman’s main desire should be toward creating life and building a family. This is a true statement in many cases; however, when it comes to Sula it is far from it. Nel is the definition of the ideal woman while Sula is not. Sula doesn’t desire to have children or get married, her main concern is her and Nel’s friendship. When Sula loses her relationship with Nel because Nel builds a symbiotic relationship with someone else Sula is now willing to leave and find a new life somewhere else. Ten years later she returns to the Bottom because she didn’t find what she was looking for. Sula comes back a little upset to find out that her best friend is just as boring as all the other women in town. She is now doing the same exact thing as everyone, she “had given herself over to them” (Morrison, 118). Nel’s promise she made when she was child was broken the day she married Jude Green. She promised that she was going to become herself. He is the exact same as Wiley Wright, Nel’s father, both of them are more concerned with economic success rather than family
“A wise mother knows: It is her state of consciousness that matters. Her gentleness and clarity command respect. Her love creates security” (Vimala McClure). Mothers play an important roll in a child’s life; shaping how a child will view things in the world, their religious beliefs, he way how they set up their values in life and etc. Every individual life is shaped by personal relationships they have with others. Toni Morrison’s Sula, tells the story of a black community in the fictional town Medallion, Ohio, where two girls grow up together, Sula and Nel, are formed by the influence of race, gender and society. Morrison describes the various stresses and sacrifices of motherhood and offers varied examples of motherhood. The female relationships and especially the mother-daughter relationship prove to be highly important for the identity development of the female characters in the novel. The women are faced with severe consequences due to racism. The double marginality the characters encounter influences the mother-daughter relationship and subsequently their identity development.
When women are kept in their classical role of mother and caretaker, all is well and their lives are simple. Children relate positively to their mothers in this typical setting; while Dantés was in prison, during a time of distress, he remembered something his mother had done for him. For example, Dumas writes, “He remembered the prayers his mother had taught him and found meanings in them which he had formerly been unaware.” (41). Mothers teach their children to the best of their ability, evidenced in Dantés, as well as when Caderousse says Mercédès is instructing her son, Albert. It is in these moments that a mother’s love, compassion, and necessity are revealed. Lives are calm and enriched as long as women are in their niche. This includes non-maternal nurturing roles, for example, Mercédès attentiveness to Dantés father and Valentine’s special ability to care for Nortier. This loyalty is valued and shown as essential for the stability of life. Though The Count of Monte Cristo depicted women as best suited to the home, they intermittently stepped further out of that r...
Josephine, while still left somewhat undefined, is more easily understood than Richards. She is the sister of Louise Mallard, and so her primary actions, which are consoling her sister, expressing great concern for her and her safety, ad perhaps even being somewhat meddlesome into her sister’s privacy, are all typica...
She is marginalize from society by her partner and she has to live in the shadows of him. She is unbelievably happy when she found out about the death of her husband. She expresses her feelings of freedom in her room where she realize she will live by herself. This illustrates that Louise has been living in an inner-deep life disconnected form the outside world where only on her room away from family and friends she discovers her feelings. It is important to mention that even though Louise has a sister, she does not feel the trust to communicate her sentiments towards her. We discover a marginalization from family members and more surprising from a women, Louise’s sister. The narrator strictly described Louise’s outside world but vividly reveals what is in her mind. At the same time she feels guilty of her emotional state by recognizing that she loved Brently mallard sometimes, her husband. Louise contradict herself but this demonstrates her emotional feelings about her husband disregarding her marriage. The situation of this woman represents the unhappiness and disgraceful life that women had to suffer from their