Unforgettable Journey Explore the Depths of Sula by Toni Morrison

Embark on an unforgettable literary journey with “Sula” by Toni Morrison, a compelling narrative filled with depth, complexity, and profound insights into the human experience.

Ready to immerse yourself in a story that will captivate your mind and stir your soul? Keep reading to uncover the rich tapestry of themes and emotions woven into the fabric of Sula.

Genres

History, Biography, Memoir, Society, Culture, Fiction, Literary Fiction, African American Literature, Women’s Fiction, Historical Fiction, Drama, Friendship, Family, Coming of Age, Identity

“Sula” is a poignant tale that follows the lives of two African American women, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, as they navigate the complexities of friendship, love, and identity in the fictional town of Medallion, Ohio.

Set against the backdrop of the early 20th century, Toni Morrison delves into themes of race, gender, and societal expectations with unparalleled depth and nuance. Through lyrical prose and vivid imagery, Morrison explores the bonds of friendship and the consequences of betrayal, inviting readers to ponder the nature of good and evil, freedom and constraint.

As the narrative unfolds, Sula and Nel’s intertwined destinies reveal the intricacies of human relationships and the enduring power of the human spirit.

Review

“Sula” is a masterpiece of literature that showcases Toni Morrison’s unparalleled talent for storytelling and her keen insight into the human condition. Through richly drawn characters and evocative prose, Morrison invites readers into a world that is at once familiar and utterly unique.

The themes of friendship, identity, and societal expectations resonate deeply, leaving a lasting impression long after the final page is turned. While “Sula” confronts difficult truths about the complexities of race and gender, it also celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring power of love and friendship.

A timeless classic that deserves a place on every bookshelf, “Sula” is a testament to Morrison’s enduring legacy as one of America’s greatest writers.

Introduction: The compelling story of two friends who choose very different paths

Sula (1973) invites you into the lives of Sula Peace and Nel Wright, childhood friends whose lives take sharply different paths. Their story explores friendship, betrayal, and identity, as well as examining life in a quiet African American town in the 1920s.

It’s not an overstatement to say that Toni Morrison’s Sula is a true masterpiece of contemporary American literature. In it, Morrison explores the lives of two African American women, Sula and Nel, against the backdrop of a segregated early twentieth-century Ohio. Their story delves into friendship, betrayal, community, and the search for identity.

In this Blink, you’ll navigate their complex relationship, starting with them becoming childhood friends. You’ll also encounter the Bottom, the town where they both grow up, with all the dynamics of a traditional African American community. So let’s dive into Morrison’s narrative – and meet Sula.

Part 1

Our story begins in the Bottom, a neighborhood overlooking the town of Medallion, Ohio. The community is undergoing a transformation – and things don’t look good. Old buildings that used to make up the heart of this African American community are in the process of being leveled. Why? To make room for a golf course – one that will primarily cater to Medallion’s white residents.

The Bottom is a community that was itself born out of racism – its name stems from a deceptive promise made by a white farmer to his black slave: if the slave worked hard, the master would give him fertile “bottom land” in the valley below. But instead, the slave received a plot in the hills – a very tricky place to farm.

With all of this as a backdrop, we meet Helene Wright. She was married off by her grandmother Cecile at the young age of 16, and the suitor was none other than Cecile’s great-nephew, Wiley Wright. The life they build together in the Bottom could be called respectable, and, after nine years of marriage, Helene gives birth to a daughter, Nel. Fast forward to 1920, and Helene receives word that her grandmother is gravely ill. She packs her bags and arranges for a train journey to New Orleans with Nel.

Shortly after boarding the train, however, the reality of racial prejudice in the segregated South rears its ugly head – a white conductor rudely questions their presence in a whites-only carriage. The whole thing happens quickly, with Helene trying to appease the conductor and avoid conflict. But the incident affects Nel deeply – it etches a profound understanding of the lived reality of institutional racism into her young mind.

Tragically, they do not make it to New Orleans in time – upon arrival, they learn that Cecile has already passed away. We also meet Helene’s mother Rochelle, who, with her bright yellow dress and intense perfume, strikes Nel as extremely different from her own mother. This unexpected encounter is Nel’s first meeting with her grandmother.

After the funeral, Nel and Helene return to the Bottom. It’s after this that Nel meets Sula, a girl with a striking birthmark over one of her eyes. Although they’ve never met before, both girls are sure they’ve known of each other’s existence from dreams. They quickly develop a deep friendship.

ANALYSIS

We’ve entered a world in which appearances are deceptive – the true value of things, be they land or relationships, is always obscured by social conventions or personal traumas. This manifests in the transformation of the Bottom from a vibrant community into a homogeneous golf course – it encapsulates an extended metaphor for loss of identity that continues throughout the novel. After all, it’s not just land that’s being lost – it’s also culture, history, and a way of life that can’t simply be replaced, along with all the trauma this connotes. This ties in with Helene and Nel’s encounter with racial prejudice and the complications of family – these also link in with intergenerational trauma, as well as questions of identity. All of these characters begin to paint a picture of the complex community that is the Bottom – and the stage is now set for the unfolding friendship of young Nel and Sula.

Part 2

We’re now introduced to Sula’s grandmother, Eva Peace, a towering figure of the Bottom. Her husband BoyBoy had deserted her years before, after which she made a harrowing decision – to leave her three children in the care of a neighbor, all in order to ensure their survival. 18 months later, she returns – but with only one leg. Rumors begin to spread fast – did Eva sacrifice her leg for insurance money? The possibility of such an act cements Eva’s position as someone willing to do anything to help others in need. She even turns her house into a haven for those with nowhere else to go.

We then meet two of her children, Hannah and Plum. Whereas Eva projects her independence with her strength of character, Hannah asserts hers with short-lived romantic affairs with various men of the Bottom. The story of Plum, however, is one of dependence – in this case, heroin. After returning from fighting in the war, he is a broken man, and heavily dependent on his opiate addiction. Once full of life, he is now a husk of a person – a shadow of the son Eva once knew.

One night, Eva makes an unimaginable decision – to end his suffering once and for all. In an act of love, she sets Plum’s room on fire and, by doing so, ends his life. Although this decision came from a place of love, it leaves deep scars on her family – and the community at large.

The story now shifts back to the burgeoning friendship between Nel and Sula. They say that opposites attract – and this is most definitely the case with these two. Nel was raised in a very structured environment, whereas Sula personifies chaos and free-spiritedness. They spend their days roaming the woods of the Bottom while sharing their dreams and fears.

One day, as they play near a river, they encounter Chicken Little, a young boy from the neighborhood. They begin to play, and at one point, Sula decides to swing Chicken Little by his hands. Laughter and excitement fill the air. However, circumstances take a tragic turn when Sula’s grip slips – and Chicken Little is accidentally flung into the river. The water closes over him and he drowns.

Frozen in shock, the weight of the tragedy slowly descends upon the two girls. They decide never to tell anyone about the incident. Chicken Little’s body is soon found; Sula and Nel both attend his funeral, sitting silently. While Nel feels guilty, Sula exhibits more complex emotions. She muses over the inevitability of death, and seems to be in the process of detaching herself from the incident entirely. The tragedy casts a long shadow over their friendship.

ANALYSIS

We’ve now dived deep into love, sacrifice, and the complexities of human relationships. This especially plays out in the contrasting upbringings of Sula and Nel. While Nel grows up in a traditional family structure, Sula’s upbringing is more unconventional – she is raised mostly by women, and is surrounded by the various boarders staying at her grandmother Eva’s residence.

When it comes to love, we are quickly introduced to its more painful elements via Eva’s decision to end her son’s life, which challenges traditional perceptions of love as a purely benevolent concept. Instead, we are shown love’s dual nature, and its capability for both selflessness and selfishness.

The incident with Chicken Little, on the other hand, showcases the dynamic nature of friendship. Just as with love, friendship is not defined by a simple moral binary – instead, it manifests as a complex, multifaceted experience shaped by the choices made within it. In the case of Sula and Nel, of course, this means that their once-innocent friendship is now tainted by a tragic secret that they plan to take with them to their graves.

Part 3

The Bottom, reeling from tragedy, is struck by a sweltering heatwave. This unfortunately leads to another tragedy. While preparing food in her yard, Hannah lights a small fire. Suddenly, her dress ignites, and her body is quickly engulfed in flames. Eva, witnessing the event, tries to reach her daughter by jumping out a ground-floor window – her leap falls short, however, and she herself sustains injuries. Other members of the community attempt to put out the flames with water – but this creates steam that injures Hannah further. Her final moments are marked by intense suffering and the silence of those around her as they realize her fate is sealed.

Witnessing her mother’s death is a pivotal moment for Sula. Her silent observation while others attempt to help her mother casts a long shadow over her relationship with the rest of the community. Sula was already known as someone who saw herself as an outsider, but her inaction here made her seem almost cruelly detached. Now she was someone who not only questioned social norms, but also stood apart from basic human responses to pain – even when the one suffering was her own mother.

All of this leads Sula to make the decision to leave the Bottom. In addition to escaping the tragic death of her mother, she’s desperate to detach herself from the conservative mindset of the community – her skepticism about marriage and traditional gender roles has become too much to bear for both her and the town around her. She sets out to seek liberation.

Ending up in Nashville, she begins attending university. She is surrounded by new ideas, lifestyles, and philosophies, all of which contrast hugely with those of the Bottom. It is her embrace of sexual autonomy in particular that sets her on a collision course with the community she left behind.

The year is now 1937, and ten years have passed since Sula left the Bottom. She returns a changed woman – while the town has not budged an inch from its traditional ways. Her return coincides with a “plague of robins” in the Bottom, which the townspeople attribute to her homecoming. They are even more horrified when they find out she has slept with white men, an unthinkable act for many in the community. And when random accidents happen around them, it is Sula who receives the blame – she is accused of somehow causing a  Mr. Finley, a member of the community, to choke to death on a chicken bone upon setting eyes on her.

In the face of the moral outrage at Sula’s presence, it seems at first that her friendship with Nel has stood the test of time – they reminisce over their shared past and express hope about the future. However, it’s not long before their newly revived friendship descends into acrimony.

One night, Jude, Nel’s husband, returns home, venting about his job. Sula’s playful teasing irritates him, and he retorts by commenting on her birthmark. But the tension in the room quickly shifts – Sula’s response to Jude’s irritation is not anger, but laughter. Her free-spiritedness draws him in, offering him an escape from his otherwise constricted life. The two begin an affair. It isn’t long before Nel discovers it – and is shattered, especially when Jude decides to abandon her and their children. She is left devastated by the betrayal of her husband and best friend.

Sula’s return also leads to drastic consequences for her grandmother, Eva. Tensions reach a boiling point when Sula accuses Eva of murdering her son Plum. Eva then accuses Sula of passive complicity in Hannah’s death. In a moment of intense anger, Sula even threatens to kill Eva.

This confrontation is followed by a shocking turn of events – Sula manages to assume guardianship over Eva, and has her committed to a nursing home. This act sends ripples of disbelief through the community.

ANALYSIS

Hannah’s tragic death and Sula’s subsequent departure continue to demonstrate the ambiguity of love, the complexities of mother-child relationships, and the challenges of societal norms. This section also highlights both identity and autonomy, especially in terms of the dichotomy between selfhood and communal identity. Sula’s journey and subsequent return play into this in a powerful way – they don’t signify just a physical journey, but also an exploration of the self beyond the ideological boundaries of her upbringing.

Sula, then, is not depicted as a villain, even though the townspeople see her as such – instead, she is portrayed as a figure struggling for personal identity in a world that seems to demand conformity. Even her affair with Jude is treated as more than just a simple betrayal – it’s an assertion of her independence and refusal to be confined by notions of loyalty and morality.

Loyalty is also questioned when Sula has Eva institutionalized; as well, this introduces questions of power and control into the complex relationship between the two characters. It turns out that the act of caring for someone can also be an act of dominance – like Eva’s decision to end her son Plum’s suffering. On one hand, Sula’s decision to institutionalize Eva can be seen as an act of liberation, of freeing herself from the weight of her grandmother’s expectations. But at the same time, it is an act of control in which she exerts power over Eva’s fate.

All of this leaves us with a challenging question – what is the cost of individualism in a society that values the communal over the individual? And how can one reconcile these two things? Is it even possible? Sula’s actions demonstrate the difficult nature of these questions – perhaps true autonomy cannot be achieved without sacrificing communal responsibilities after all.

Part 4

Three years pass, and Sula engages in a number of fleeting affairs. Although she doesn’t yet know it, she seeks physical connection as a way to escape the isolation that her life as a pariah involves. Then, Ajax – one of her lovers – takes a special interest in her. Unlike his other lovers, whom Ajax finds boring, Sula is unpredictable. Their passionate affair comes to an abrupt end, however, when – for the first time in her life – Sula experiences a desire for monogamy and domesticity. Ajax senses this and abandons the relationship, leaving Sula absolutely devastated.

It isn’t long before Sula falls seriously ill. Nel, sensing that the end may be near, decides to visit her former best friend. She finally plucks up the courage to ask the question that has been on her mind for three years – why? Why did Sula betray her and sleep with Jude? A conversation on morality and obligation ensues. Sula rejects Nel’s belief that Black women can’t afford to be alone or independent. She also asserts that every woman she knows is slowly dying, but that she is going to go out with a bang. Finally, they reach the crux of the conversation when Sula admits that she slept with Jude simply to fill a space in her head. She had no desire to betray Nel, and no love for Jude – she simply wanted to fill the void in her psyche that she felt in that moment.

Nel is visibly shaken and confused by Sula’s answer. Sula then asks Nel how she knows that, as Sula says, “she[, Sula] wasn’t the good one,” directly questioning the moral judgments the two women have assigned to themselves and each other throughout their friendship. By the time Nel prepares to leave, Sula has descended into a state of feverish delirium – she calls again to Nel, asking, “How do you know?” The question hangs in the air – Nel exits, leaving Sula entirely alone. Their friendship, once a source of strength, ends with unresolved tension.

Wracked with pain, Sula reflects on her life, wondering if all the emotions, actions, and words she experienced were simply “something to do.” Curling up into a fetal position, she notices that her heart has stopped beating, and that she has stopped breathing. She realizes that she has died – and perhaps now she can finally escape the restrictions on her existence. But she is not filled with regret – instead, she thinks of Nel, and a smile forms. She cannot wait to tell Nel, once her closest friend, that death, much like life, is just another experience – just another “something to do.” And with that thought, she lets go.

The reaction to her death is met mostly with a sigh of relief from the inhabitants of the Bottom. Finally, Sula’s troublesome presence is no more. Her funeral is sparsely attended. During the service, Nel contemplates her own feelings and memories about Sula, and she lists the ways in which Sula’s fierce independence affected Nel’s own sense of identity and life choices. Nel even begins to question her own values – what about her life? Should she continue living it within the confines of societal norms?

As the years pass, the Bottom experiences a series of changes. A much-discussed tunnel project, which had been a topic of both hope and contention among the residents, finally sees progress. The beginning of construction signals the possibility of economic opportunity for the community – but what other repercussions will such progress bring to this conservative community? Only time will tell.

ANALYSIS

In this final section, we witness the end of Sula’s quest for independence. In her relationship with Ajax, she thinks she has found a genuine connection – one rooted in mutual recognition of individuality and freedom. Of course, his rejection of her underscores the tragic irony of her life – her quest for freedom leads to deeper isolation.

Her solitary death is not depicted as a tragic moment, however. Instead, we are given insight into her profound realization while reflecting on her life’s choices – she finally comprehends that her relentless pursuit of independence and rejection of a normative existence, while isolating, was a necessary journey toward understanding the essence of freedom. This is not just the end of her physical existence – the moment serves as a deep reflection on the implications of challenging the status quo.

Ultimately, it is through Sula’s life story that we encounter Morrison’s critique of the rigid norms that often shape our relationships and self-perception. Could it be that true human connections often lie beyond conventional social boundaries? And can we only attain this by refusing to conform – even if the cost is isolation?

Conclusion

The journey of Sula and Nel begins with their bonding as children and ends with their diverging paths as adults. Their story is marked by deep friendship, betrayal, and an eventual reconciliation of sorts. You’ve followed Sula’s quest for independence – and all the ramifications for both herself and the community of the Bottom around her. Her hometown’s reaction to her unconventional life choices culminates in her solitary yet profound death – as well as Nel’s contemplation of their shared past and its impact on her own identity.

About the Author