Not a fan of this book, either, but I admit it has power. Those Deweys will trouble me forever. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Importance of Questions in Toni Morrison's Sula
Anyone who has made a habit of living in modern Western civilization is familiar with the potential importance of other people's opinions. It is no mean trick to live in ignorance of what other people think and to make all choices without the rudder of considering our part in the larger picture of society. Even those who reach such self-actualization will probably admit to a certain number of childhood influences that helped form their future enlightened selves. In Sula, Morrison structures the novel so that character development is always shown as a reaction to the environment. Although the titular character sees through this process – and perhaps this is why the book is called Sula and not Bottom People or somesuch – each "self" within the story is portrayed as a reactionary creation of other characters' beliefs and actions. The daunting power of perspective is revealed in three episodes when two characters break away from the normal ritual in order to question one other.
The limited third person narrative point of view immediately sets readers on equal footing with the residents of the Bottom. Morrison uses neutral omniscience to give us the necessary glance into the moods and cause and effect of the characters' minds, but she provides no more than the little moment of recognition that one person might notice in another's facial expressions or body language (Friedman 148). Morrison sits unbudging between the reader and the character, perhaps mentioning that Sula is saddened or Nel is secretly pleased but not allowing us to indulge in a single ponder from any character's head. We must instead judge and form relationships with the people of the Bottom just as we would if they were our neighbors, from a polite distance.
The story of Shadrack's time in the war is relayed with the same level of emotional distance that a reader could expect from an old man on a grocery store porch with time to kill, fond of embellishment, but still speaking of someone else's pain. We are not given any firm evidence for what happened to Eva's leg nor do we get the satisfaction of at least knowing how she felt about it either when it happened or later; we get no special priveleges as readers that are not extended to the Bottom community. If Sula ever lost track of her thoughts while in a college lecture, perhaps doodling on a composition book while wondering whether she was happy and if perhaps she would or should ever be liked as well as loved, the reader does not know. Morrison makes us do the pondering. When Ajax calls Nel and Sula "pig meat," we see them cover their merry eyes, but any thought that may flash through Sula's mind and foreshadow her later involvement with the man is left to our imaginations (Morrison 50). Like the people of the Bottom, we have to filter what we see and hear through our own experiences and the questions we can get answered.
Questions are conveniently rare in Sula, perhaps so that when they do occur it illustrates the point that what Hannah, Nel, and Sula manage to extract from the minds of others does not change anything, especially anyone's identity. The significant question is the one that Hannah sing-songs to her mother, Eva: "Mamma, did you ever love us?" (Morrison 67). That Hannah is carrying an empty bowl and a peck of "Kentucky Wonders" is a subtle flash of symbolism to accompany this unusual moment. Hannah fills the bowl, as empty as the part of her wanting an answer, with the shucked "wonders" – literally just a bean but also read as the "wondering process" in which Hannah is not prone to engage – in a manouevre that Morrison describes as the playing of a complicated instrument (68). Hannah does not play it well, for Eva is angered by the question and unwilling to respond to Hannah with a simple yes or no.
This obstinance is fitting, for Eva's nature is to provide definitions, not subject herself to them. She and Sula both spend several mysterious years away from the Bottom; they both participate in activities that are horrifying to their peers (although Eva's role in Plum's death is only suspected), and they both cut against the grain of expectations by remaining single, but Eva integrates into society while Sula antagonizes it. Neither escapes a strong carving of personality by their environments, but Eva alone gains an upper hand by not only accepting that the Bottom defines who people are but by making it her life's occupation to inspect the lives of others and interfere until they comform to her beliefs. In this, she lives up to her Biblical namesake, a matriarch-figure that shapes the futures of those who come after her. Examples of this include Eva's newlywed tenants, who cook and care for their men as she directs. More notable are the Deweys: once Eva lumps them together under the same name, their fate is to remain together, indistinguishable in appearance and nature even to their parents. It is a move that touches on magical realism and demonstrates the power the people in the Bottom have over others in determining who they are.
The daughter that Eva names after herself, despite being called Pearl, moves out of the story – perhaps there is not room for more than one Eva in the community. The son becomes Plum, a fruit its farmer will harvest at will. Perhaps it is therefore fitting that Hannah, with the unremarkable name, has to be the one to dare to ask the dreadful question. In return, Eva obeys the novel's form and recounts a litany of events, not personal feelings, but adds that she "stayed alive for you," reminding Hannah that a mother may provide the ultimate in self-definition for a child by giving that child life and keeping it going (Morrison 69). Meanwhile, Eva's own structure for existence also relies on another, for she says that hating BoyBoy is what keeps her alive and happy (Morrison 37).
The second significant exchange of questions takes place between Nel and Sula. "How come you did it, Sula? [...] What did you take him for if you didn't love him and why didn't you think about me?" is what Nel asks, wanting to know how Sula could betray their friendship by sleeping with Jude (Morrison 144). Outwardly this may seem like an important question, one that will ease Nel's frustration and perhaps even lead to a new turn in the story where a character will define herself instead of leaving it to others. However, Nel has already heard enough of Sula's justifications for her lifestyle in the preceding dialogue, all of which she has dismissed as showing off. Sula's answer that Nel's actions only matter to Nel reinforces the concept that the play called "life," created by each person with all other people as the supporting characters, never has more than an audience of one. Sula states that being good to a person is exactly the same as being mean; both are actions that will sculpt the person's identity, and the risk lies in simply making those actions, not in the intentions felt about the outcome.
Sula continues to explore the importance of perception by asking Nel, "How do you know [...] about who was good? How you know it was you?" (Morrison 146). The question outlines the lack of power one person has over saying what is true, especially in their society, where Nel's mother must be known as "Helen" just as the highest elevation in the area is called the "Bottom." Nel "knows" Sula is a bad person because Nel has examined Sula's actions and found them wanting by her standards. Sula's point, however, is that Nel is only one judge. If Sula believes that Nel is the bad person, does that make her so? If not, why does Nel's perception matter more than Sula's? Sula knows that it is pointless to explain her own beliefs to Nel, for Sula can never be anything to Nel other than what Nel wants her to be. As much as Nel believed that Jude was hers exclusively, Sula believed that she and Nel were so much the same person that they could both have Jude without repercussions. As far as Sula is concerned, that one perspective should be more valid to the majority of people than another is only a whim of fate, and fate is fickle.
Shortly before this scene Nel berates Sula for her pride and for trying to have more than a single person (especially a "colored woman") can or should. Sula's response to Nel's assertion that Sula's life is lonely is, "But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you" (Morrison 143). Sula may take more responsibility for her life's course, but Davis points out that Sula's sense of "freedom" is only a direct result of experiencing the dual traumas of her mother's claim not to like her combined with the drowning of Chicken Little (331). "Hers was an experimental life – ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up the 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" (Davis 331). That Sula can see how she is influenced by others is what makes her, like her grandmother, unique. Where Eva controlled this influence by becoming a self-preserving master of it, Sula uses her awareness only to meet her short-term goals, the only goals she has, and to justify destruction as just one more kind of influence that people exert on others, no better nor worse than anything else. She even goes so far as to explain her own unsavory actions as nothing more than a desire to meddle with the being of others, such as when she humiliates others just to see their faces change and assumes no responsibility in the repercussions, only in the acceptance of them (Davis 332).
The final round of questioning takes place between Eva and Nel in the nursing home. Nel tries in vain to get Eva to acknowledge that she is not Sula, but Eva replies with, "You. Sula. What's the difference?" (Morrison 168). Eva is trying to tell Nel that, for anyone other than Nel, the particulars or even accuracy of Nel's identity is unimportant; Eva just wants to satisfy herself by hearing about the drowning. When Nel changes tack and asks Eva if Eva thinks Nel is guilty, Eva likewise changes course to say, "Who would know that better than you?" (Morrison 169). The message is that, although Nel must accept that people will make her into whatever they want her to be, it does not mean that Nel should look to others to know who she is. After this encounter, Nel is able to adopt some of Sula's mindset, to acknowledge the pleasure in letting other people be no more than props in her own happiness, and to remember the good feeling of contentment as Chicken Little flew into the water and drowned as a result of her and Sula's actions. Just like Sula watches in interest as her mother burns, watching Chicken Little drown makes the day more thrilling. Nel sees that undesired things will happen regardless of how one lives; like Sula, she now allows herself to enjoy what she can.
Toni Morrison's Sula offers such a round ensemble cast of characters that to call the novel after one character in particular may seem an exercise in randomness. More cynical readers may venture that someone as potentially unlikeable as Sula Peace needs everything she can get, including star billing, to keep the reader interested in a character whose actions are no more unusual nor scandalous than those of her family and neighbors for the first four-fifths of the book. It is in the final fifth of the story that Sula earns her eponymy: her offensive (or simply unusual, in the case of her encounter with Shadrack) activities touch so many Bottom residents that she is stretched into an elevated sense of self as a result. In return, the people of the community are changed for having judged her, first to avoid being like Sula, then to give in to "bad" behavior after she is dead (Reddy 41). Sula knows she will never get to define herself, and of all the questions that flash the high beams at the reader, Sula asks the one that can replace all others: "How do you know?"
Works Cited
Davis, Cynthia A. "Self, Society, and Myth in Toni Morrison's Fiction." Contemporary Literature 23 (1982): 323-342.
Friedman, Norman. Form and Meaning in Fiction. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1975. 135-166.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.
Reddy, Maureen T. "The Tripled Plot and Center of Sula." Black American Literature Forum 22 (1988): 29-45.
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