Sula by Toni Morrison

Sula by Toni Morrison, is a book about a black female and the various events throughout her life. The majority of these events were at the fault of Sula, but because of her past she did not know, or could not understand any better. Sula became the woman that she was because of the people and events that were around her during her childhood. When Sula was a child, she grew up faster than most children because of the things that she saw and heard, so it was almost as if she had a loss of childhood. When Sula was only three years old, her father died. Although this may not have had a direct effect on Sula because of how young she was, her mother, Hannah, was left without a husband and with an unquenchable thirst for â€Å"maleness† (Bukisa). This passion for men led to Hannah having many affairs with different men but never building real relationships with them. Sula, being as curious as any child, often watched these interactions, or at least saw the aftereffects of these interactions, and understood that her mother found pleasure in men. Another incident during Sula's childhood involves her listening in on one of her mother's conversations. One day Sula heard Hannah tell some other woman that she loved Sula, but that she did not like her. Hannah's comments about not liking her made Sula begin to think about love. These thoughts of love were her first real interaction with adulthood (Sparknotes). Hearing her mother say this made Sula realize that she could not count on anyone except herself (Begnal). Sula realized that love was not what she thought it was, and it made her feel insecure, but secure at the same time. She knew that her mother would not stop loving her, but that love was not the same thing that she had once believed it to be (Sparknotes). A third traumatic event that occurred during the childhood of Sula was the death of Chicken Little. Sula and Nel were out playing near a lake, when a boy named Chicken Little showed up. Nel teased him, but instead of joining her friend to tease Chicken Little, Sula defended him. Sula then began to swing Chicken Little around playfully. Unfortunately, Sula lost her hold on Chicken Little, and he went flying into the lake and drowned. The death of Chicken Little further drove Sula's loss of childhood innocence because it showed her how quickly life can be taken (Sparknotes). The immortality that most children believe they have, was then gone from Sula. She never even bothered to tell anyone what she did because, instinctively, she knew that society would misunderstand the incident and blame her for Chicken Little's death. Another death Sula experienced while growing up was that of her mother, Hannah. Hannah took a nap and dreamt about a red bridal dress. She tried to get her mother, Eva, to interpret the dream for her but before Eva was able to, a young Sula distracted her. Later, Eva looked out her window just in time to see Hannah getting ready to jump into a fire. Eva jumped out of her second story window in order to try to save her daughter, but it was too late. When Eva looked up, she saw Sula standing there, watching everything happen. This event holds extreme significance in Sula's life transformation into a woman for multiple reasons. First, Sula looked as if she were genuinely interested in the burning of her mother, almost as if she had enjoyed it. She was not concerned with saving her mother, but she just wanted to watch what was going on. Secondly, it made her grandmother resent her, because in some ways she felt that Hannah's death was Sula's fault. Because Sula distracted her from interpreting Hannah's dream, she was unable to stop Hannah from killing herself (Sparknotes). Her grandmother was the only family that she really had left, and because Eva resented her, it forced Sula to grow up even more rapidly. Sula's relationship with Nel was another major factor in her maturation into a woman. Sula and Nel were like each other's support systems (Bukisa). Throughout their childhood, Nel always supported Sula and vice versa, even though they were extremely different. Nel was conservative and brought up in a relatively stable home by a proper, lady-like, mother, the way their society expected, while Sula was raised in a home where people constantly came and went, by a mother who slept with different men on various occasions. These two completely different worlds were what drew these two young girls to each other (Bukisa). They were opposite in more than just their upbringing. Sula was rougher and tougher than Nel was, but her emotions were also inconsistent. Nel, on the other hand, was quiet, and normally had a steady emotion (Bukisa). It was as if these two girls were each one half of the same whole, making them inseparable. During their childhood, they shared everything, including boyfriends. All of these factores contributed to Sula's personality and actions as an adult. Sula as an adult had problems with love, recognizing boundaries, and fitting in. Sula lacked the ability to love because of her family, mainly her mother. Hearing Hanna say that she loved Sula but did not like her made Sula believe that love was something that was forced upon people, instead of a choice. Sula's personality was much too independent to be forced to do anything, so she decided not to love at all. The closest she ever even came to love was with a man named Ajax, but he eventually left her which did nothing but assure Sula that she should not love. Eva's resentment of Sula also convinced Sula that love was not an emotion worth pursuing. If her own family could not love her, then there was no reason for her to love anyone, including her family. Her boundaries issue was also caused by her mother, but Nel contributed to it as well. Her mother's contribution was brought about in the way she slept with the husbands of wives around the community. Seeing her mother have no respect for the bond between a husband and a wife, Sula began to think that it was all right for her to do the same. Sula's relationship with Nel was a cause of this boundary issue as well. Because Nel and Sula had shared virtually everything throughout their lives, Sula believed that that would never change. She thought that her and Nel's bond was never going to change no matter what happened or what they shared. This thought process led Sula to sleep with Nel's husband during a moment of weakness and then act as if everything would be perfectly fine. Once Sula realized that Nel was mad at her she was confused because she thought that they could share anything (Schmoop). Sula's third issue, of fitting in, was not one that she was too concerned about. Also related to her childhood, Sula had seen that fitting in was not necessarily the â€Å"correct† way to live. Watching her mother as a child, Sula saw that life was completely enjoyable even while living outside what society considered to be acceptable. Sula lived with no regrets and did not care what anyone thought of her. Ten years after leaving home, Sula returned to visit her grandmother ,Eva. During their conversation, Eva brought back memories of Hannah's death , so Sula put her into a nursing home. Even though society looked upon this action as being cruel, Sula did not see it as being so, and did not care that society did (Sparknotes). As flawed as Sula was, she never surrendered to falseness or fell into the trap of conventionality in order to keep up appearances or to be accepted by the community. As Morrison notes of her, â€Å"She was completely free of ambition, with no affection for money, property or things, no greed, no desire to command attention or compliments ? no ego† (Cliffsnotes). The women of the community hated her particularly because she was living criticism of their own dreadful lives of resignation (Cliffsnotes). She refused to settle for the traditional role that most women in her communtiy had, so they felt threatened and saw Sula as a witch (Begnal). being seen as a witch would bother the average person, but because Sula did not care about fitting in, she simply brushed it off. As an adult she showed less emotion than she did as a child because to her, emotions were just a something to occupy time (Sparknotes). Sula's transformation into a woman is a remarkable result of her upbringing. The way she let nothing get to her, and did not change for the next person, can all be explained by understanding her adolescence. She was, in a way, a direct result of her environment. From her loss of childhood and her friendship with Nel, came the woman that she was on the day that she died, unbothered.