Essay two - Sula - Grade: B+ PDF

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Sacrifice is an important motif in Sula. How is this motif developed in the novel, and to what affect?...

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Ashleigh Lowrey – 85707448 Engl103 Essay two Sacrifice is an important motif in Sula. How is this motif developed in the novel, and to what affect? 1562 words

The novel Sula, written by Toni Morrison, follows the relationship between two young girls-turned adults, and their differences and similarities which result in the creation of otherness between the pair. Morrison has stated that she wants to create a canon of black writing and in Sula, offers commentary on issues such as racism, gender, relationships and death. An important motif in the novel is sacrifice and this develops throughout the novel to progress into thinking about wider issues such as the good and the bad, or the concept of “otherness”, and how, you can be perceived to be either one or the other one, based on the level of your sacrifice. This can be seen through characters such as Eva Peace, Helene Wright and the deweys. The effect of the sacrifice in the novel allows readers to open their eyes and consider the wider implications suggested throughout the text. One of the main characters throughout the novel in which sacrifice plays a huge part in her life is Eva Peace. At a young age Eva marries Boyboy and has three children; Plum, Pearl and Hannah. Many times throughout the novel we see examples of the sacrifice Eva has made in order to better her kids, one of the more physical representation of this being her lost leg. While there are many suggestions as to how Eva lost her leg (stuck it under a train for an insurance pay out, sold it to the hospital etc.) the accurate version of events which led to this lost leg are never given. It is implied however that it was for financial gain so that she was able to provide and support her family. Eva also sacrifices her son Plum, when he returns home from the war as a heroin addict. She “rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the Kerosene-soaked Plum lay” (Morrison, 47). While her actions are at time questionable, Eva is possibly the only character in which we see a maternal desperation for the wellness of her kids and the strength to partake in these actions. However, there are times when she uses her sacrifices to control and manipulate her family, such as when Hannah asks her if Eva ever loved them to which “[her]

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Ashleigh Lowrey – 85707448 Engl103 Essay two hand moved snail-like down her thigh toward her stump” (Morrison, 67), and she states “No. I don’t reckon I did. Not the way you thinkin” (Morrison, 67). A first response to this may seem quite appalling however, while it is questioned whether Eva loved her kids, this gives the effect that she does. This is clear in the way she cries after the death of Plum and throws herself out the window when she sees Hannah sacrificing herself. Ultimately Eva Peace is a good person with a strong sense of love for her family. While some might consider her horrible actions as a sort of evil, Eva is well respected in the community of the Bottom and ultimately is perceived as being good. Morrison acknowledges this by stating “It was interesting to me that black people at one time seemed not to respond to evil in the way other people did” (Tate, 129). Morrisons hints here at the underlying theme of otherness, or the concept of “the doppelganger” (Otten, 26) in the novel, as can be seen in a negative light, of the character Helene Wright. A contrasting character to Eva’s good can be seen in Helene Wright and her bad. Helen Wright is perhaps the most frustrating and arrogant characters of the novel. Born to a “Creole whore” (Morrison, 17) Helene does everything she can to deny her blackness, and in the process attempts to deny her daughter Nel of any relationship between her past identity. Helene views herself as “flawed” (Morrsion, 20) and through her daughter, attempts to re-write herself a new life. This is even showed in the way that Nel is a shorter version of Helene. She has literally written herself into her daughter through the name. Helene “enjoyed manipulating her daughter” (Morrison, 18) and forces her to hot comb her hair and put a clothespin on her nose to straighten it (Otten, 30). While on a trip down south to visit her dying grandmother, Helene is described as a “pale yellow women” (Morrison, 20) but is still expected to sit in the coloured section of the train, causing her complete humiliation. She attempts to charm the conductor by “[giving a] dazzling [and flirty] smile” (Morrison, 21) of which does not go unnoticed by the black male passengers in the coloured section. Two soldiers were “bubbling with a hatred for her mother that had not been there in the beginning but had been born with the dazzling smile” (Morrison, 22). As stated by Christianse, the reaction of 2|Page

Ashleigh Lowrey – 85707448 Engl103 Essay two the two black soldiers’ manifests something within Nel, and she has a feeling of rebellion (32). Rejecting her mother’s attempts to clone and manipulate her, Nel states “I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.” (Morrison, 28). Despite Helene’s desperate attempts to forge Nel into a renewed version of herself, she has a level of arrogance which cannot be denied. Deep down Helene was “grateful…that the child had not inherited the great beauty that was hers” (Morrison, 18). While Helene wants a certain life for her daughter, it is in a way impossible. Nel is darker than she is, and the only way Helene can combat this is by pulling Nel’s nose or hot combing her hair. While Helene is a character that is frowned upon, she is an essential character none the less. There is a need for a bad to balance out the good. Helene can be the bad other to Eva’s good. Otherness has been defined as “how majority and minority identities are constructed” (Zevallos, 1). This definition is perfect in regard to the relationship between Helene and Eva. Helene who sees herself as white and right (Wright) and Eva who is considered a minority are constructed to balance each other out. In between this relationship we can see characters such as the deweys, who are neither good or bad. If the level of sacrifice is how one’s otherness can be measured, then the most drastic of all can be the deweys. The three “lost boys” (Mayberry, 525) are part of the trio which make up the deweys. The deweys are forced into sacrifice in perhaps the saddest way of all time. They sacrifice their identities, forever staying “stout-hearted, surly, and whole unpredictable” (Morrison, 39) children. All three varied in looks, one was “deeply black”, one was “light-skinned with freckles” and the third was “half Mexican with chocolate skin” (Morrison, 38). Perhaps by including a mixture of races and ethnicities here, Morrison is critical of her own people also, to show that we are all subject to this racism and disregard for certain societal expectations of who is considered superior. The deweys have been manipulated and controlled so that they all resemble something completely identifiable. There is no need to be able to identify them as “they’s all deweys” (Morrison, 38). While the deweys are the characters who have sacrifice the most, they are not viewed in the same light as the other characters. It can be argued that the deweys are the only characters in the novel who do not have an 3|Page

Ashleigh Lowrey – 85707448 Engl103 Essay two “other”. They have sacrificed their identities and personalities, therefore there is no space for them to have an “other”. They have almost become slaves of society, in a way that they are not remarkable or memorable. They may as well not exist. This idea is further developed throughout the novel as not once is the term “deweys” given a capital letter. Not only are they not given names, but they are denied the right to have anything to which they can identify with. When the community of the Bottom took part in mass suicide “[the deweys] bodies were never found” (Morrison, 162). The deweys can be viewed as a symbol of the way black American history has been written out of the history books, and that the way in which American’s of the time identified themselves as “not-black”. This concept is supported by Morrison in her book Playing in the Darkness, in which she states, "For in that construction of blackness and enslavement could be found not only the not-free but also, with the dramatic polarity created by skin colour, the projection of the not-me" (38). This gives the effect of a lack of knowledge and ignorance on the importance of black history and how this need of sacrifice can be avoided. In Sula, Toni Morrison has used the motif of sacrifice to develop more in-depth ideas and concerns on issues such as family, racism and the rejection of ones’ ethnicity and the absence of American black history. These views can be identified through characters such as Eva Peace, Helene Wright and the deweys. These characters offer an insight to the struggles and concerns of those at the time, and allows readers of a later time and generation, to learn about and see the importance of one’s history and identity, and how an absence of these can cause people to sacrifice aspects of themselves of which are important to them and society.

Works cited

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Ashleigh Lowrey – 85707448 Engl103 Essay two Books Christianse, Yvette. Toni Morrison, An Ethical Poetics. Fordham University Press, 2013. Morrison, Toni. Playing in the dark: whiteness and the literary imagination. Pan Books Ltd, 1992. Morrison, Toni. Sula. Penguin Random House UK, 2016. Otten, Terry. The crime of innocence in the fiction of Toni Morrison (1989) Tate, Claudia. Black Women Writers. New York Continuum, 1983. Journal Articles Mayberry, Susan Neal. "Something other than a family quarrel: The beautiful boys in Morrison's Sula." African American Review, vol. 37, no. 4, 2003, pp. 517-533 Ryan, Katy. "Revolutionary suicide in Toni Morrison's fiction." African American Review, vol. 34, no. 3, 2000, pp. 389-412. Web sources Zevallos, Zuleyka. “What is Otherness?”. The Other Sociologist. Wordpress, 2011. Web. 7 th September 2015.https://othersociologist.com/otherness-resources/

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