Sula

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They moved toward the ice-cream parlor like tightrope walkers, as thrilled by the possibility of a slip as by the maintenance of tension and balance. The least sideways glance, the merest toe stub, could pitch them into those creamy haunches spread wide with welcome. Somewhere beneath all of t Eva Peace is Sula’s grandmother. Eva marries young and has three children, but after five years of marriage, her husband leaves. Her children are Hannah, Pearl, and Plum. The baby boy, Plum, quit having bowel movements as a baby at a time when Eva had no food left. Eva uses the last of her lard to lubricate her finger to unclog his bowels. This experience brings her to the realization that she has to do something drastic to get food for her children.

As previously mentioned, Ajax, the man in the yellow gabardine pants, is an object of sexual desire for Sula from early age. Morrison characterizes him as gold. His name also suggests the similarly named Trojan warrior who was a good soldier but was also very arrogant. Ajax loves airplanes. He brings Sula milk, but she won’t drink it; she just admires the bottles it comes in. He also is the only man who really talks to Sula. The mythological Ajax is like Ajax, Morrison’s character, particularly with respect to his sexual prowess and to his ability to leave women easily. Ajax defends the helpless. He is reputed to shoot at Mr. Finley when he learns that the man shoots at his own dog. Hannah is a diluted, more relaxed version of Eva. She teaches Sula her views on sex, but Sula takes them, along with everything else she learns from the women of her family, to a new and different level. Of the three women, Hannah has the weakest, most passive personality. Helene Sabat Wright In completing the loop of [a] circle of sorrow, and by emphasizing the plurality of the circles of sorrow, Morrison throws into relief the fact that Sula is metanarrative, a story about stories. These include all of the stories contained within the text of Sula, and as I will argue, a set of foundational texts upon which Sula is written in a kind of postmodern palimpsest” (116).Again, what strikes me is the scene’s combination of strangeness and familiarity: the weird games children play when they are outside and have no toys; the sense that as a young girl, I, too, played this way with, became one with, other young girls (whose names I know: Hilda, Chanda, Nyaka). Even the smallest details of the scene—the literal bits and pieces Sula and Nel throw in their merged hole—shudder between the random and the archetypal.

Sula Peace: the childhood best friend of Nel, whose return to the Bottom disrupts the whole community. The main reason for Sula's strangeness is her defiance of gender norms and traditional morality, symbolized by the birthmark "that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose," [2] which, according to some psychoanalytic readings, is a dual symbol with both phallic and vaginal resonance. [3] and now i understand why this book kept injuring me - Sula does NOT play nice. it is a rough book full of rough things too potent to be contained between the covers of the book itself. or maybe the book was just trying to get my attention because it knew i would like it so much. either way, it was worth the price of a few battle scars marking me like sula herself, whose birthmark gives her face a broken excitement.Helene Wright: Nel's strait-laced and clean mother. Though the daughter of a prostitute, she was raised by her devoutly religious grandmother, Cecile. One day, Hannah tries to light a fire outside and her dress catches fire. Eva sees this happening from upstairs and jumps out the window in an attempt to save her daughter's life. Sula, who was sitting on the porch, simply watched her mother burn. An ambulance comes, but Hannah dies en route to the hospital, with Eva injured as well. Other residents of the Bottom believe Sula remained still because was stunned by the incident. Eva believes that Sula stood and watched out of curiosity. McDowell, Deborah E. “Boundaries: Or Distant Relations and Close Kin.” Afro-American Literary Studies in the 1990s, edited by Houston A. Baker, Jr., and Patricia Redmond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989: 51-70. Hester is the daughter of one of Hannah’s friends, Valentine or Patsy. In 1922, Hester is grown and out of the house and her mother says that she is not sure that she loves her daughter. Hannah replies with her feelings about loving but not liking Sula. The hovering gray ball 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.