FREE ESSAY ON SULA BY TONI MORRISON

SULA BY TONI MORRISON

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 individual searches for
their own selves leads to nothing but despair and Sula's death. Nel's 
realization that they were only truly individuals when they were joined as one allows
them to merge once again. 
Morrison portrays Sula and Nel as binary opposites at the beginning of the novel. In our
first view of Nel she is as conventional and conforming as a young lady can be: Under
Helene's hand the girl became obedient and polite. Her mother calmed any enthusiasms that
Nel showed until she drove her daughter's imagination underground. (p.18) In this passage
Nel is merely an extension of her mother with no autonomy of her own. Helene's hand is
the iron fist of authority from under which Nel cannot release herself. Morrison makes it
clear here that Nel is a calm and unimaginative girl who conforms completely to her
mother's strict orders. Sula, on the other hand, comes from a totally different
background. She is her own person as she has none of her mother's slackness (p.29) and,
unlike the oppressive neatness(p.29) of Nel's house, lives in a woolly house, where a pot
of something was always cooking on the stove; where the mother, Hannah, never scolded or
gave directions; where all sorts of people dropped in; where newspapers were stacked in
the hallway, and dirty dishes left for hours at a time in the sink, and where a
one-legged grandmother named Eva handed you goobers from deep inside her pockets or read
you a dream. (p.29) 
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 
Sula to sit still as dawn. (p.29) Morrison makes it clear in these instances that each
one lacked something the other had. That something is neither small nor insignificant. It
is the fundamental make-up of each girl's character. Morrison deliberately portrays Nel
and Sula in this manner to illustrate emphatically how entirely different they originally
are. They are so different, in fact, that they are two facets of the same being - Nel
conventional and orderly; and Sula unconventional and unsettled. The comfort each feels
in the other's home demonstrates their initial and subconscious desire to merge into one
being. Morrison intimates, in these instances, that the two facets cannot thrive
individually and hints that they will soon become one. This merger takes place most
dramatically with Sula's accidental murder of Chicken Little. Looking back on this
incident Nel recalls that: All these years she had been secretly proud of her calm,
controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable, her compassion for Sula's frightened
and shamed eyes. Now it seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity and
compassion was only the tranquillity that follows a joyful stimulation. Just as the water
closed peacefully over the turbulence of Chicken Little's body, so had contentment washed
over her enjoyment. (p.170) This passage reveals that the original binary opposite
characters are no longer very different. During this incident Nel, the former calm and
orderly girl, has as little control over her emotions as Sula usually has. And it is
Sula, the supposed type of evil force and figure of disorderliness, who has the presence
of mind to run after Shadrack. Nel realizes that maturity, serenity, and compassion, all
qualities forced upon her by her mother, were not the emotions she felt at that 
moment at all. Nel was as wild and excited as Sula was. The water closing over Chicken
Little's body represents the subtle merging of Nel and Sula. The turbulence each girl
felt in their lives as opposite individuals is washed over peacefully by the contentment
of being one. Nel's conscience here reveals the guilt she feels over this incident years
later. Just because she did not throw Chicken Little into the river does not mean she is
not at fault because, as Eva points out, You watched. The lines of good and evil merge
here as both girls are at fault for the accident. As the lines of good and evil merge, so
do the individual selves of Sula and Nel. After this incident, Nel, in the presence of
Sula, can now affirm the individuality her mother had tried to suppress. And Nel, to
Sula, becomes the closest thing to both an other and a self. (p.119) They each grow so
alike that they have difficulty distinguishing one's thought from the other's. (p.83) For
Nel, talking to Sula had always been like having a conversation with herself. (p.95) 
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 
be the conventional woman she once was as a child. Nel settles for a safe, unimaginative
life and thrives on community approval, the prize she wins through unremitting efforts to
win respectability. On the other hand, Sula becomes unsettled, disordered, and
adventurous when Nel's imposition of orderliness and restraint is no longer apparent.
Without Nel, Morrison makes clear, Sula no longer has a complete self: 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. (p.119) Sula then has frequent sex, becomes
a pariah, and craves for the other half of her equation. (p.121) Without each other, both
women are incomplete souls. Morrison demonstrates through these relationships with men
that sexual relationships destroy the combined relationship of Nel and Sula and fragments
their individual identity where friendship creates a whole person out of the two parts.
Nel and Sula lose their common identity when men come along and their closeness can only
be revived if they can recover their common identity. 
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) 
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.