Having two main characters in the story may make the reader think why the book was named only after one of the two characters. While the story was set on a typical African American life where characters are conservative and ordinary, the book Sula, however, was centered on the character of a woman who at an early age, fought back against suppression and became different. It can therefore be argued that Toni Morrison has chosen Sula as the name of the novel because of the characters unique role in the novel. She offers traits that the other characters do not have and presents questions that only the very liberal can dare sympathize with.
Sula and Nel are childhood friends who came from contrasting personality of families. Nel is from a family who lives a conventional life in a stable house while Sula is living with her mother and grandmother named Hannah and Eva respectively, and three adopted borders in a house which her mother built of out money from insurance company after a rumored self-inflicted amputation of her legs. Despite the polarity of their upbringing, Sula and Nel are inseparable as friends due to the difference in their lives. While Sula follows the independence of her mother and is in search for more adventure to happen, Nel is in desire of Sulas life as a result of being a traditional good woman. They are so attached to each other and to the friendship they have built that it can be described as we were two throats and one eye and we had no price (Morrison, 147).
Once, Sula and Nel were playing with Chicken Little. While Sula swings Chicken Little, she loses her grip on him causing his fall on the river, drowned him and eventually rooted resulted to his death. Even though what happened was not their intention, the two were so frightened and promised not to tell it to anyone.
For Nel, the day the accident happened was the day that they would never come back to yet for Sula, the day was almost like just a beginning of a new life for her. According to Maureen Reddy, this marked the day when Sula realized that there was no other that you could count on and that there was no self to count on either (Morrison, 118-119). The feeling was strengthened by another event when she heard her mother say I love Sula. I just dont like her (Morrison, 57). Since then, she longed for change, since she does not want to live as the women of Bottom do, in thrall to male needs, male desires, male rules. (Reddy, 36). It was the day she realized she wanted to be different and lead an experimental life.
Sula started to exhibit a daring attitude. She asked Nel to come with her in confronting the bullies who always stop them in using the road which is a shortcut going home. When they reached the place, the bullies tried to stop them but Sula threatened them by using a knife in slashing off a part of her finger and said If I can do that to myself, what you suppose Ill do to you (Morrison, 55). The bullies since then did not disturb them.
When Nel married Jude after high school and remained conservative, Sula was heartbroken because she felt betrayed by her friend by leaving her. She left Bottom and Sulas experimental streak continued. She abandoned the conventional custom of marrying and settling down with a husband. Instead she engages in sexual fling without seeking any kind of meaningful commitment in her life. It can be said that she is involved in sexual experimentation, as the purpose of the associations that she initiates with men clearly appear to be sexual.
She spends a decade out of Bottom educating herself. While she was away, she was enchanted by the prospect of dating white men, she being an educated African American woman. Apparently her experimentation with the white men does not appeal to her eventually as she notices that there are other girls who have as well chosen the same kind of lifestyle. She finds the lifestyle boring so later contemplates going back to Bottom.
Back in Bottom Sula finds Nel still married to Jude and it is not long before she offers the readers another controversial gig she sleeps with her best friends husband. Moreover, she sends her grandmother Eva to a nursing home, something African Americans is perfectly against of since they believe that elderly should be taken care of. Hannah looking after Eva is a good example of women who live lives according to the norms bestowed upon them by the societal customs and this just made Sula be perceived as more evil by the
community.
According to Reddy, Sulas real crime is her complete disregard of her womanly responsibilities, as defined by her community (Reddy, 39) Morrison used the contrasting fate of Nel and Sula to emphasize the experimental life Sula is having. There was a stark contrast in the life Sula lived and the one her best friend Nel had. Nel was very conventional and does not resort to rushed decisions in the manner that her friend does. The author used Nel as the perfect character to personify a typical conventional African American woman who toes the community line. Every decision she made in her life was in line with the accepted values her community expects from her. She does not go away across the country to pursue her desires in the manner Sula did. She stays in Bottom, gets married to Jude and becomes a good wife to him. Whereas Sula is considered the villain of the story, Nel is the readers darling always doing what a good woman will do. She settled down to have children, a good indication of her maternal instincts. She does not experiment with the unknown but becomes herself a victim of Sulas sexual experimentation when Sula goes behind her back to have sex with her husband.
Maggie Galehouse pointed out that Sulas life is like one womans rejection of every available social script. (Galehouse, 339). This statement of Galehouse can sum up the definition of the experimental life Sula had. Against the odds, Sula lived an unconventional life. She did what she wanted to do with her life even if it would mean she would break traditions or relationships. The community disliked her and everybody wanted her out of their sight. It was her actions which drove the storyline and kept the story alive. The consequences of her actions left ripple effects that affected other characters in the story. She was regarded by other characters in Bottom as the personification of evil. Her demise brings to a close a controversial life full of sympathy, pity and mortification.
In Morrisons article called Unspeakable Things Unspoken The Afro-American Presence in American Literatureshe pointed out that Sulas blackness is not just physical or is not just the melanin in her skin it is something internal, individual and elemental, manifested in disagreement to the ongoing social traditions and a development of the experimental and the untried. In short, Sula lived a black life as well with her experimentations. Just like in her other novel the Beloved, Toni Morrison shows how a single womans dismissal of all existing societal code of conduct produces significant community tension. This was said because Sula became the talk of the town. Many thought that her becoming evil should end thru her death so that good omens will come in and bring the community positive effects.
I always thought of Sula as quintessentially black, metaphysically black, if you will, which is not melanin and certainly not unquestioning fidelity to the tribe. She is new world black and new world woman extracting choice from choicelessness, responding inventively to found things. Improvisational. Daring, disruptive, imaginative, modern, out-of-the-house, outlawed, unpolicing, uncontained and uncontainable. And dangerously female. In her final conversation with Nel she refers to herself as a special kind of black person woman, one with choices. (Morrison, 25).
On the other hand, using the point of view of Sula, Reddy analyzes and concludes that Sula dies, I would argue, because death seems her only option for freedom. Looking back at the younger years of Sula, it can be assumed that all her actions are just a result of the environment she had. Her mother was uninterested in her, her grandmother blames her for the death of her mother, Little Chicken died after she lost grip on him while playing, and all other unfortunate events that made her realize that she want to deviate her life from what is customarily women of her age are having. It was Sulas escape and when she was old and sick and realized that she had a meaningless life, death was also her escape.
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