Sula

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Throughout the novel, Sula is the primary focus of the town’s various attempts to find a scapegoat to shame. Shame in the Bottom is expressed in relation to Sula. Shame is attributed by the weak-hearted to those who do not feel shame. The townspeople believe that their judgments of Sula will create in her a sense of shame. People in the community so associate her with what is wrong, that they refuse to look at her or to interact with her in the same way that they would with each other. Despite her many judgments, even Nel feels compassion for Sula’s “shamed” eyes, but Sula’s independence and freedom do not permit her to feel shame herself. Jude is also associated with shame in Nel’s assessment. Jude does not seem ashamed himself, even when Nel witnesses his and Sula’s affair. In fact, neither Jude nor Sula feel shame at that moment.

I’m feeling this trembling time, its desire and ache, “their small breasts just now beginning to create some pleasant discomfort,” this girlish queerness—neither straight nor lesbian exactly, but feverish with slant possibility—this dewy conspiracy of selves: This ball appears to Nel, or would have appeared had she allowed herself to look at it. After the appearance of the gray ball, Nel finds she cannot allow herself to let out her personal howl of pain following the loss of Jude and her marriage. She feels the howl coming but it will not come. When she stands up, she believes that it is hovering just to the right of her in the air, just out of view.Because they would realized years earlier that they were not white or male, and that all liberty and success were out of bounds for them, they would go about developing Something else to be. Their encounter was good since it allowed them to learn from one another. Daughters of distant moms and unfathomable dads… they found the companionship they sought in each other’s gaze” (Morrison, 1998, p. 52). Jake Freeman is one of the boys that Nel remembers as being beautiful in 1921. Jake has a brother, Paul Freeman. John L. Exemplary... The essential mysteries of death and sex, friendship and poverty are expressed with rare economy Newsweek In turn, after her marriage fails, Nel turns to her children for emotional fulfillment they cannot provide. Her children are eager to escape into adulthood, away from her needy over-attentiveness. Nel has a brief relationship with a bartender at a hotel in Medallion, but the tryst does not develop into anything lasting. Betty (Teapot’s Mamma)

Sula is centrally concerned with questions of right and wrong in interpersonal relationships forged by bonds of kinship, marriage, and, not least of all, friendship. What does it mean to be good? What is evil? What does it mean to be a friend? What is love? How might we learn from each other? Because Sula is a novel and not a treatise, potential answers to these questions await the reader in the form of character and situation rather than explicit philosophical argument” (264). Helene is described as an impressive woman who is convinced that she has the authority as social arbiter in Medallion. She holds sway both in her social and church activities and over her husband and daughter, whom she manipulates to suit herself. Henri Martin The teacher is the Deweys’ first instructor. She is annoyed that the boys are registered under the same name and the same age, but is sure that she will be able to distinguish them from each other. Much to her surprise, she confuses the boys and has trouble distinguishing them from each other. TeapotMorrison is just one of those authors that seems to understand certain aspects of life and human nature better than the rest of us. I can't wait to read The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. Foucault, Michel. Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Vintage, 1965.