Sula

Sula follows the friendship of two girls, Nel and Sula, growing up in an African-American community called the Bottom. Sula and Nel were both raised by single mothers but in completely clashing environments. As their lives progress we explore how the events of their friendship and being raised in the Bottom effect them in conflicting ways. Although the girls seem to think of themselves as the same person as kids they both grow in different directions as their lives progress, each to follow in their mother’s footsteps, when they reunite as adults they realize that they can no longer relate how they could as kids as their friendship falls apart. Sula is told from the point of view of many different characters in the Bottom, giving us a broad view of the community which Sula and Nel were surrounded by..

Sula was raised in chaos. Her mother, like her grandmother, was a wildly promiscuous woman but at the same time was so undisruptive in her ways that she was accepted into the community fairly without contest. Through this Sula grew up thinking that sex was simple, casual and consistent. Her mother slept with the husbands of her friends and neighbors without consequence, never holding any importance to her friendships with women and never being effected by any man.

Nel was raised in a pristine house watched by her rigid mother who had a high head, honey skin and a dazzling smile. Nel’s mother was the daughter of a prostitute and is constantly trying to live as far away as that lifestyle as possible. Nel’s mother, Helene, made up for her mulatto skin with her attitude and selectiveness. Helene looked down on Sula and her family, not allowing Nel to go to their house.

Despite their differing lives, Sula and Nel shared two things; their enthusiastic comfort in the other’s life and their infatuation with men. Nel loved the turmoil in Sula’s life. She was comforted by Sula’s loud and crowded house just as much as Sula was comforted by the order in Nel’s. Sula could sit for hours in the silence of Nel’s neat living room, completely satisfied. Their content in each other’s lives makes it interesting that they chose to stay on the path of their own, with that, unsurprising that both grew up to be greatly unsatisfied. One thing they had in common in their lives was the emptiness of men. Nel’s father left and Sula’s died, so they grew up with their mothers. Men were unreliable and lacking any imperativeness to their lives. Although men play a huge role in their stories, they are at the same times insignificant and impermanent. The only men who are consistent in the novel are either insane or unrealistic.

Sula lived her life in a desperate but at the same careless search to cure her dissatisfaction. Sula moved to the city where she used men and threw them away, looking for something which, when she realized she couldn’t find it, brought her back to the Bottom. When she came back she found that Nel had grown up to get married, have children, live the common life. Sula came back to disrupt the community, but mostly the life of Nel Her curiosity mixed with her lack of a sense of consequence allowed Sula to sleep with Nel’s husband, inevitably tearing her life apart. After this they realize that they are not only not the same person, but not even two people who understand each other anymore.

Sula is beautifully written and full of unusual and captivating characters. Toni Morrison brings us through an intriguing exploration of the development of these two girls. Along the way she writes stimulating investigations on human behavior when affected by anything from affairs to war. How people deal with the crazy, what pulls something over the line from acceptable to not, no matter how small the difference. What ignites fear and how a common hatred can bring an entire community together. If not for the story, this book can be read simply for the way Toni Morrison can put words on a page. She has a very specific style, which is at the same time smooth and provoking.