"SULA" BY TONI MORRISON
PLOT
Toni Morrison?s Sula is located in a Midwestern black community
called ?The Bottomdeals?. It deals with the large number of problems two black
women have to face in order to understand their own existence. The novel is
then a long journey through the difficult lives of two close friends, Sula and
Nel, which we can follow from childhood to elderly age and eventually death. Sula
is also a story which tells apart the concepts of disobedience and conventionality,
in which the routine is imposed by the law-abiding inhabitants of The Bottom,
even though the rebellion leads to success in spite of the community’s radical
disapproval. Thrilling and emotional, it does become an honest look at the
power of friendship and it is specially concerned with the human condition.
It goes without saying that the main issue
of the novel, the one we shall remark, is this beautiful friendship between two
women, whose intensity first helps them,
but as the time goes on it does hurt them. Sula and Nel share a lot of things.
They are both black, smart, poor, and were brought up in a small Ohio town.
They meet when they are twelve and still dreaming of a romantic world, where
they could meet a blue prince. Through their teenage years they share
everything: games, impressions, discrimination, wishes, secrets, even crime,
until Sula badly feels the necessity to leave. She longs to be away of the
slaving neighbourhood, which is deliberately concealing people?s failures, high
unemployment and delinquency. Sula makes the leap and travels around the cities
of the whole country for ten years, until
she finally decides it is time to come back to her native town to meet
her best friend, who she could never forget a single day of her life. In the
meantime, though, Nel had got married
and has already got three children. She now belongs to another world, having a
demanding family, and they don?t have so much in common any more.
As far as the author is concerned, we
believe that he is trying to highly dignify black women?s lives, as he creates
two heroines who show to have a great personality as they are willing to leave
behind all their shadowy past. Morrison’s extremely beautiful, hopeless
characters are locked in a world where hope for the future is something odd,
however they show they are really alive despite their sufferings. He uses the
mature story of the two friends as the centre of many other stories, which can
sometimes be mixing for the readers. His skill to build a unified novel is
shown in the way he combines the always controversial issues of love, racism
and sexual relationships. In a clear, sound style, Toni Morrison uses all kinds
of language, sometimes clear sometimes slang, to brilliantly give rise to the
bond between two lives, which only a bitter, loveless, crazy world can lead to
its destruction. Sula is a successful novel that was nominated for a
National Book Award in 1974.
MAIN ISSUE:
FRIENDSHIP AND SURVIVAL
In Sula, Toni Morrison narrates the beautiful
story of two friends since their childhood, who lived completely different and
separate lives in their twenties and thirties, and reunited already as grown
women. Nel Wright was brought up to become an obedient wife and mother, happy
to remain in her hometown of Medallion, Ohio. In contrast, Sula Peace leaves
the town to experience university studies, men, and life in the big city, an
exceptional choice for a black woman to make in the late 1920s, a time of
economic depression and repressing morals. As girls, Nel and Sula had been the
best of friends, because both of them had a clear spirit and an imaginative
mind. When they met again as adults, it’s clear that Nel had chosen a life of
submission and settlement, while Sula had to fight her own way to defend her
apparently unconventional choices, beliefs and, consequently, life style. But
despite their physical and emotional distance, and the fact that Sula can never
get used to living anywhere, and Nel can
no longer understand her, the bond between both close friends seems to remain
indestructible.
The author often shows in her writing her
concern with the survival of African Americans and their culture, as well as
the conflict of race in the United States. Sula is in a way a political
text and its characters exemplify cultural progress. The reader gets introduced
in a polarity of interest: black/white, male/female, good/bad, and so on. The
novel at every level also questions easy divisions between war and peace, good
and evil. Morrison points out a large number of concepts, as the novel encodes
an African worldview of life and civilisation. Sula also makes the
readers wonder about the idea of war in terms of the political and social
struggles of African Americans. We mustn?t forget that it was written at a time
when the Vietnam war was at its peak, which took the lives of many Americans,
blacks and whites.
It is not easy for anybody to feel empathy
for Sula (the character) and when, in the second half of the novel, she sleeps
with her best friend’s husband, most readers might feel totally disappointed.
This particular incident unavoidably irritates readers and makes them wonder
how she could do it to her closest friend. Thus, we believe that most readers
find it easier to identify with Nel, the best friend, the kind-hearted woman,
the good girl. Sula doesn?t question herself and she has no regrets, yet she
has a strong personality and we must follow her steps during all the novel. She
seems to be selfish, as she shows a complete disinterest in most of the women?s
typical ambitions: having beautiful children, being a good wife, having a
respectable job and a home. This is an example of her fight for personal
freedom. On the other hand, Sula’s individuality leads to her collision with
all the other characters.
MY OWN VIEW
1993 Novel Prize Literature winner Toni
Morrison’s novel, Sula, is a
wonderful masterpiece that is trying to portrait what life was like for a large
number of black women for many decades. It also reveals the growth of the
African-American society and the strong feelings they experienced. The readers
are told the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, two women separated by
different attitudes to life, and then reunited when they are already
middle-aged. They had been inseparable through childhood. Their friendship
seems indestructible, until they suddenly take drastically different paths. Nel
a path of domestic life in a small town, while Sula starts a journey to the
unknown, where she will find the wild life of university and city experiences.
When Sula returns, they must face the fact that their relationship has changed.
They still seem to want to keep together, despite their changed ways and
lifestyles. They have to choose what is important to them, what they can?t
forgive and what can be overlooked. Nel is our monotonous character, the one
who doesn?t change at all. She is the sensible one, because she spends all her
life in her hometown and does what every African-American woman is bound to do
at the time, being subordinate to the rest of society. Sula, however, is our
tragic protagonist, the one who goes out to be educated, who improves herself
and refuses to accept the wall that whites and blacks have built for her.
Sula is a very intense dramatic
novel and, it goes without saying, it was written with great talent. It is a
moving and powerful story, where there are so many vivid moments that make the
readers tremble and even vomit (e.g. Sula slicing her finger). It is also an
honest story that explores the individual and mutual identity of two young
black women growing up in the Midwest. This novel was interesting both for its
poetic style and the plot. The reader is often afraid of what may happen next.
The ending, though, was uneven, as we felt that the story was a bit incomplete,
perhaps because we expected more of Lula. It is amazing, and worth reading
simply for the beautiful writing, although the plot is interesting too. It
makes you question your own values of what is right and what is wrong, who is
good and who is bad. After reading it, it becomes clear that sometimes
friendship is more important than morals.
Emigdi Subirats
emigdi@hotmail.com
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