Connections and Images- Ending

This section of the story and the interactions between Sula and Nel remind me of the way high school girls fight. The fighting is not physical but mental and psychological. The two women try to inflict as much pain as possible while trying to appear as though nothing is wrong. Even though the two women do not see each other, the tension between them is completely tangible and palpable. They refuse to forgive each other even while Sula is dying. They continue to put their pride before their friendship; all the while trying to out do each other and insult each other. This kind of fighting is petty and childish and is more about the actual fighting rather than the event that actually started the fight. The event that started it all is even typical

This image represents the ending of Sula, because it shows a black woman who is clearly strong, yet alone- just like Sula. Her power and strength is a visible presence but it does her little good because she has no one to prove it to. She is destined to live and die by herself.
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Quote Analysis [137-End]

Quote Analysis:

 

“The house billowed around her light then dark, full of presences without sounds. The deweys, Tar Baby, the newly married couples, Mr. Buckland Reed, Patsy, Valentine, and the beautiful Hannah Peace. Where were they? Eva out at the old folks’ home, the deweys living anywhere, Tar Baby steeped in wine, and Sula upstairs in Eva’s bed with a d boarded-up window and an empty pocketbook on the dresser”(146).

 

Nel thinks that Sula is extremely lonely, but she does not do anything about it. She realizes that Sula has nobody in her life that she can depend on or talk to as a friend. This is because Sula does not treat people the right way. She does horrible things to each person in her life without thinking about that person or their feelings. She slept with Jude even though it meant nothing to her but everything to Nel. Nel sees that Sula has no friends and that the people who Sula once cared for are non-existent in her life anymore. There were people who could have been a part of Sula’s life, but Sula chose to treat them badly and, for that, she is punished with having no one to care for her.

 

“…either because Sula was dead or just after she was dead a brighter day was dawning. There were signs … Now that sula was dead and done with, they returned to a steeping resentment of the burdens of old people. Wives uncoddled their husbands; there seemed no further need to reinforce their vanity” (150-154)

 

Sula had a major impact on the town and even though the town seemed to hate her presence, Sula made the townspeople appreciate life more. Initially, upon hearing the news of her death, the townspeople celebrated. However, now that Sula is gone, they have no reason to prove their love for their husbands or children. Even Teapot’s Mamma treats Teapot the way she used to before Sula pushed him down the stairs. Even Shadrack has changed since Sula died. He remembers that his only visitor, the little girl, was Sula Peace and that he was never going to have another visitor because Sula was gone. Sula had both a positive and negative effect on the people of the Bottom, and so did her death.

Summary [137-end]

Summary:

Sula is sick in Eva's bed and Nel, after not having spoken to her in a while, goes to visit her. When Nel enters, Sula sends her out to get a prescription for her from the drugstore. When Nel comes back, they talk about Sula and the way she is leading her life. Sula claims that because she is a colored woman, she might as well have the same responsibilities as a man. Sula also realizes that she doesn't need a man to be happy and that she is not lonely, even though Nel believes she is. She feels complete with her life because she feels like she has lived, as opposed to the other women who just slave over the men in their lives. They continue talking and the topic of Jude comes up. Sula tells Nel that Jude meant nothing to her and that she never loved him. Nel feels completely shocked and upset because Sula has no consideration for her feelings at all. Later, Sula dies and no one comes for her. Sula's death makes everyone in the town happy but people start caring for their loved ones less and less. Her death makes everyone bitter towards everything. Shadrack remembers his only visitor, the little girl. He realizes that that little girl was Sula. Shadrack starts going around town singing and ringing his bell because it is National Suicide Day. The town starts to follow him and the crowd of people turned into a parade. They enter the unfinished tunnel and the water ends up taking many of them under the current. Only a few survive. In 1965, Nel remembers what the Bottom was like years before. She goes to visit Eva in the nursing home and Eva accuses her of killing Chicken Little and Nel realizes that she is not perfect. In the end, Nel cries out to Sula.

Quotations and Analysis

1) “What she had regarded since as unbecoming behavior seemed fitting to her now; they were screaming at the neck of God, his giant nape, the vast back-of-the-head that he had turned on them in death. But it seemed to her now that it was not a fist-shaking grief they were keening but rather a simple obligation to say something, do something, feel something about the dead. They could not let that heart-smashing event pass unrecorded, unidentified. It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whimpering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste. Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss.”
This quote describes the part of the book where Nel is in the bathroom after discovering that Jude and Sula have slept together and that Jude is leaving her. This passage not only portrays the importance of death in this novel but in the way Nel regards what has just happened to her. She sees both her husband and Sula as dead. They have crossed a line with Nel and in her eyes, no longer deserve the life they once had with her. This passage also shows Nel as having human, physical emotions. Throughout the story thus far, Nel has been portrayed as perfect, stoic and unfeeling. This passage turns all that around. I feel that this passage marks a shift in Nel’s character. For the first time in the novel, Nel is thinking just of herself when she lets loose this flood of emotions; this is something she has never done before.
2)”She had no thought at all of causing Nel pain when she bedded down with Jude. They had always shared the affection of other people: compared how a boy kissed, what line he used with one and then the other. Marriage, apparently, had changed all that, but having had no intimate knowledge of marriage, having lived in a house with women who thought all men available, and selected from among them with a care only for their tastes, she was ill prepared for the possessiveness of the one person she felt close to.” P. 119
This passage describes Sula’s reasons for sleeping with Jude and gives great insight into her character. This passage shows how distanced and detached Sula is from society, how independent she truly is. Sula needs no one- except Nel. We discover that Sula truly had no intention of malice when she slept with her best friend’s husband. We also discover how closely Sula and Nel are linked. The two see no difference between themselves; they do not know where one ends and the other begins. For this reason, they shared everything until now. Sula cannot comprehend how much things have changed. She is surprised that Nel’s husband is off-limits. She really has no idea how the society of women works, and this is why she is so loathed by all women.

Quotations & Analysis [105-137]

“Every one of them imagines the scene, each according to his own predilections—Sula underneath some white man —and it filled them with choking disgust. There was nothing lower she could do, nothing filthier. The fact that their own skin color was proof that it had happened in their own families was no deterrent to their bile. Nor was the willingness of black men to lie in the beds of white women a consideration that might lead them toward tolerance. They insisted that all unions between white men and black women be rape; for a black woman to be willing was literally unthinkable. In that way, they regarded integration with precisely the same venom that white people did” (113).

This quote describes the town’s view on Sula and on her actions. The people who live in the Bottom are clear on their position in society and they’re content with it. Unlike most other blacks, they do not want integration because their view of whites is the same as the whites’ view of them. They view Sula as someone who crosses the boundary between blacks and white by sleeping with them. As if the town’s recollection of Sula watching her own mother die was not enough to hate her, Sula adds more to her already ruined reputation by transgressing. However, since her nature is very carefree and independent, she does not care what the townspeople say about her, rather it makes her stronger.

 

“Eva’s arrogance and Hannah’s self-indulgence merged in her and, with a twist that was all her own imagination, she lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her…In the midst of a pleasant conversation with someone she might say, ’Why do you chew with your mouth open?’ not because the answer interested her but because she wanted to see the person’s face change rapidly. 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. For that reason she felt no compulsion to verify herself—be consistent with herself” (118-119).

Although Sula is Eva’s granddaughter and Hannah’s daughter, she is completely her own person. She does what she pleases without others telling her what to do, and it never seems to bother her. She does not rely on anyone for anything except Nel for support and a best friend. She does have some similar traits to Eva; they are both very strong-willed women without major male counterparts. A major difference between the two of them is that Eva is stationary while Sula is free to go where she desires. She uses this to her advantage and travels to big cities, but ends up back in Medallion. I think that no matter how much she tries to escape from her past and her family, she will always come back.

“Sula stood with a worn slip of paper in her fingers and said aloud to no one, ‘I didn’t even know his name. And if I didn’t even know his name, then there is nothing I did know and have known nothing ever at all since the one thing I wanted was to know his name so how could he help but leave me since he was making love to a woman who didn’t even know his name’” (136).

When Ajax leaves Sula she is completely distraught and she doesn’t know what to do with herself. Everything she sees reminds her of him. However, when she finds his driver’s license in her drawer, she realizes that his actual name is not Ajax but that it is Albert Jacks. This upsets her because she feels like she doesn’t know him and that there was no meaning in their relationship because she never knew his real name. This is strange because I think Sula is overreacting. Clearly, Ajax is his nickname and everyone refers to him as that. Since their relationship was never anything more than physical, it would be strange for Sula to call him anything other than Ajax. 

Sula and Eva Relationship

Relationship between Sula and Eva
Sula seems to be the most influential person in Eva’s life. They share many common personality traits even without knowing it. They are tremendously afraid of each other because they know that they are each other’s match. Both Eva and Sula are incredibly strong willed and because of this they know that they are the only people who could have power over the other. Sula tries to get rid of Eva because she is afraid Eva will kill her; she knows that since Eva was not afraid to kill her own son (Plum) she will certainly not be afraid to kill her granddaughter.

Connections and Quotations: Pages 17-34

The scene in which Nel and Helene are boarding the train and are confronted by the conductor reminds of a scene from one of the books in The Little House on the Prairie Series. In this scene, Ma and her daughters are boarding a train, just like Helene and her daughter. However, in this scene, the Ingallses are traveling toward their future while Helene is traveling toward her past. The Ingallses have a pleasant, adventurous journey on the train, while Helene and Nel are harassed by the conductor, insulted and are treated extremely poorly at all the stops they make. Although both of these scenes center around train rides, they are complete opposites of each other.

Major Quotes
1) “Helene sat down, fussily, her back toward the men. Nel sat opposite, facing both her mother and the soldiers, and ashamed to sense that these men, unlike her father, who worshipped his graceful, beautiful wife, were bubbling with a hatred for her mother that had not been there in the beginning but had been born with the dazzling smile. In the silence that preceded the train’s heave, she looked deeply at the folds of her mother’s dress. There in the fall of the heavy brown wool she held her eyes. She could not risk letting them travel upward for fear of seeing that the hooks and eyes in the placket of the dress had come undone and exposed the custard-colored skin underneath. She stared at the hem, wanting to believe its weight but knowing that custard was all that it hid. If this tall, proud woman, this woman who was very particular about her friends, who slipped into church with unequaled elegance, who could quell a roustabout with a look, if she were really custard, then there was a chance that Nel was too. P. 22
This passage describes the scene right after Helene has been accosted by the train conductor and said nothing, only smiled at him. In this passage, Nel realizes for the first time that being black is considered something to be ashamed of. She realizes that her mother has weaknesses that she has no power over. Nel now understands that if such a regal woman as her mother is looked down upon for her skin color, then she will be too.
2) The wagon was so low that children who spoke to her were eye level with her, and adults, sitting or standing, had to look down at her. But they didn’t know it. They all had the impression that they were looking up at her, up into the open distances of her eyes, up into the soft black of her nostrils and up at the crest of her chin.
This quotation is so important because it portrays the strength and presence that Eva has. Even though she has such a glaring disability and is physically tiny, she is larger than life. The incredible impact Eva has on all who meet her is clearly visible in this passage. This passage is also notable because it is another example of Toni Morrison’s style of inverting words; people in reality look down at Eva but are convinced they are looking up to her.