A name is a designation of importance, whether that is positive or negative. When a discovery of new land is made a new name typically goes along with it. When a child is born they receive a name as a symbol of their parents commitment and love. Like a contract, a name seals the connection between the person who gives it and the person or place that is the recipient of it. Names can also be classifications which can elevate a person's status or take that status away. In Toni Morrison's novels she often creates the characters with a significant emphasis on their names as they take a journey to decipher their genuine identities. She not only uses noteworthy names for her characters, but also many different fundamental locations. Morrison develops
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Eva Peace, in Sula, is one such character that takes on this form and the meaning of her name helps to establish the rest of the novel. Relating the name Eva directly to Eve from the Bible is one way in which this works well. This character Eva, like Eve, relates most directly to motherhood and the pain that accompanies the upbringing of children. She even has three children like Eve's three children, Cain, Abel, and Seth who are, "Hannah, the eldest, and Eva, whom she named after herself but called Pearl, and a son named Ralph, whom she called Plum," (Sula 32). The similarities do not end there because in the Bible, God hands down a sentence to Eve that is "in pain will you bring forth children" and this same sentence extends to Eva Peace because her children cause her nothing but grief and she never has peace (Genesis 3:16). Instead of simply being a mother and tolerating the pain that her children bring, Eva will not stand for it and becomes the opposite of Eve. Eva becomes this by murdering Plum, her drug addicted son, because she is done taking care of him and his problems. In the act of the murder Plum imagines Eva to be "the great wing of an eagle...some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing" (Sula 47). Like Eve, Eva is not blessed nor is she a blessing and though she loves her children, in one way or another, she cannot be held to the standard definition of
Eva Peace, in Sula, is one such character that takes on this form and the meaning of her name helps to establish the rest of the novel. Relating the name Eva directly to Eve from the Bible is one way in which this works well. This character Eva, like Eve, relates most directly to motherhood and the pain that accompanies the upbringing of children. She even has three children like Eve's three children, Cain, Abel, and Seth who are, "Hannah, the eldest, and Eva, whom she named after herself but called Pearl, and a son named Ralph, whom she called Plum," (Sula 32). The similarities do not end there because in the Bible, God hands down a sentence to Eve that is "in pain will you bring forth children" and this same sentence extends to Eva Peace because her children cause her nothing but grief and she never has peace (Genesis 3:16). Instead of simply being a mother and tolerating the pain that her children bring, Eva will not stand for it and becomes the opposite of Eve. Eva becomes this by murdering Plum, her drug addicted son, because she is done taking care of him and his problems. In the act of the murder Plum imagines Eva to be "the great wing of an eagle...some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing" (Sula 47). Like Eve, Eva is not blessed nor is she a blessing and though she loves her children, in one way or another, she cannot be held to the standard definition of