Readers Notebook 1, Sula By: Toni Morrison

Passage
&
Character Building
Page 118-119
In reference to Sula

"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. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, hers was an experimental life-ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the middle. The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow. . . . 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."

Throughout the beginning of the novel I didn't believe that Sula played a major role in the plot, or in fact any part of the book. It was all a mystery to me until Sula returned ten years later. After she came back from college and put her old grandmother Eva in a hospital is when her character really started to come out. I believe that it the paradox of her character resignates really well throughout this passage.

I believe that it all starts with, "hers was an experimental life-ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up those stairs". Her mother's remarks where, "You love her, like I love Sula. I just don't like her. That's the difference." (57) She only heard those words coming from her mother's mouth. I would be devastated if I heard my mom talking like that about me to one of my good friend's mother. After this Nel and Sula run to go play and that's when the Chicken Little incident occurs. After this point in the book is when I believe that Sula had her turning point. From then on she was a mischievous person.

From Chicken Little's death, Sula is not able to feel a sense of responsibility to anyone including Nel, her best friend. Sula in her own freedom became dangerous. As her mother Hannah was burning Sula sat on the porch watching her pain and anguish, not because she was dumb struck it was because she was interested. After this point in the book I felt there was no turning back for Sula. I believe that after her watching her mother burn she was set free to do whatever she pleased.

She left go on to college and was gone for ten years. During her travels she was known to sleep with white men which outraged most of the town of Bottom when she returned. She returned a completely different person, a narcissistic human being. Sula carried her self differently and even dressed as if she were in the movies. She came back and changed the town, she taught wives to appreciate their husbands, protected their children, repaired their homes, and in general banded together against the devil (page 117).

When Sula dies in the fall of her thirtieth year, the people of the Bottom are left without a direct, evil force with which to contend. Her death, described as a "sleep of water," coincides with an early frost (suggesting that Sula does have some influence over the forces of nature), which ruins harvests and renders folks housebound. With environmental and communal warmth frozen, even Teapot's Mama, who had become doting after she feared that Sula had knocked her five-year-old down the steps, returns to beating her son.