sula
Many works of contemporary American fiction involve one individual's search for identity in a stifling and unsympathetic world. In "Sula," Toni Morrison gives us two such individuals. In Nel and Sula, Morrison creates two individual female characters that at first are separate, grows together, and then is separated once more. Although never physically reconciled, Nel's self discovery at the end of the novel permits the achievement of an almost impossible quest - the conjunction of two selves. And that is what I think really makes the novel work. I found that it’s a great book that gives us a look at these two great characters. Morrison says she created Sula as "a woman who could be used as a classic type of evil force" and that she "wanted Nel to be a warm, conventional woman." She says "there was a little bit of both in each of these women... if they had been one woman... they would have been a rather marvelous person. But each one lacked something the other had." Morrison, thus, creates two completely different women yet allows them to merge into one. The sustainment of the two selves as one proves difficult and Morrison allows them to pursue different paths. But the two women's separate journeys and individua
This close-knit relationship breaks down, however, when Nel elects to recreate a similar relationship with a man instead of maintaining this one with Sula. Instead of Nel and Sula being joined to create one person, Nel and Jude "together would make one Jude." (p.83) Both Nel and Sula's conjoined personalities return to what they once were - individual. Both individual personalities, thus, become more assertive because Nel felt she needed to be "needed by someone who saw her singly." (p.84) After the separation, Nel becomes sexually repressed, her life becomes drab, and she struggles harder to Nel and Sula were not just girls together at the same time; they were girls together as one. Nel explains this to herself in this passage because it is what she never understood before. Nel misses the oneness she felt with Sula, not the relationship she never could recreate with Jude. Nel's recognition of this lost bond reunites the two women on a spiritual level and reconciles their lost self. The repetition and conjunction of the word "girl" allows Nel and Sula to become what they once were - one girl. Nel and Sula gain a bond which no married couple can ever achieve in this novel - one that creates one person out of two individual selves. The loss of this bond leaves each woman completely fragmented and leads to Sula’s death. Nel’s recognizes this fact at the end of the novel: "All the time, all the time, I thought I was missing Jude." And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. "We was girls together," she said as though explaining something. "O Lord, Sula," she cried, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl." (p.174) l searches for their own selves leads to nothing but despair and Sula's death. Nel's Where Nel is confined, Sula is free. Where Nel has been raised to be an extension of her mother, Sula has surprisingly few ties to hers. Nel's imagination has been so restricted that the messiness of Sula's house along with its strange inhabitants and many visitors must seem like an absolute dream world. Similarly, the tidiness of Nel's house compared with the disorderliness of her own allows Morrison portrays Sula and Nel as binary opposites at the beginning
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Approximate Word count = 1486
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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