Although located on the highest hill in the city of Medallion, Ohio, one neighborhood is nicknamed the Bottom. This is because the Bottom is more a people than a place. As an African
American community in the early 1900’s, the residents are at the bottom of a social hierarchy meant to predetermine their worth in the world. They are subject to discrimination from white
Valley community outside and oppressive social expectations inside. Through her novel Sula ,
Toni Morrison explores the intertwined lives of residents like Shadrack and Sula to bring to light a fresh perspective on what it means to be an individual in the face of societal pressure.
To understand the value of having an identity is to feel its absence when it is gone. The
absence …show more content…
Her daughter, Sula’s mother, Hannah is watching the whole time. Eva painfully explains how she could not watch her baby boy waste away from his crippling drug addiction that he picked up after the horrors of war. Again She evokes raw emotion that encourages understanding and sympathy from the readers. The perspective transforms a seemingly cruel act into an act of desperation. Considering the recurring acts of violence like Eva’s throughout the story in context, Putnam suggests that “ By taking the violence forced on them and redirecting it, these characters redefine themselves as compellingly dominant women.” The women are characterized like birds as if to say the females of this time are like caged birds that find their freedom in their own way. They cannot easily be labeled as good or bad due to the origin of their motivation. The characters discover a sense of control in the oppressive environments the only way they know how–violence and chaos.
Sula and Nel’s home environments negatively influence the way they handle the drowning of the little boy, Chicken Little, marking a pattern of thinking that follows them through adulthood. When the girls realize Chicken Little is not going to resurface from the …show more content…
Evoking the bird imagery once again, Morrison shifts the perception of evil. For the Bottomites, “the purpose of evil [is] to survive it,” thus Sula is a dangerous force to be reckoned with as she puts Eva in a nursing home and sleeps with married men, including Jude (Morrison 89). Sula isolates herself by challenging all precepts of her old life, pushing people away. In "Experimental Lives:
Meaning and Self in Sula," Professor Samuels interprets that in the book “[evil] is inverted to become a sin against oneself; it is one’s failure to act existentially” (33) In other words, to lose one’s sense of self and to live without self-awareness is the true evil. Nel is more conforming to the societal expectations she once despised, and Sula is extreme in her rebellion against those same expectations but only one of them is truly considered evil, Nel. Ignoring her feelings, Nel loses control of her life as an adult and Sula, focusing on her feelings, loses restraint.
Identity is established by the power of choice, choosing for oneself rather than allowing others to dictate. Although society has a significant influence on one’s identity, Morrison also explores how individuals influence society in
American community in the early 1900’s, the residents are at the bottom of a social hierarchy meant to predetermine their worth in the world. They are subject to discrimination from white
Valley community outside and oppressive social expectations inside. Through her novel Sula ,
Toni Morrison explores the intertwined lives of residents like Shadrack and Sula to bring to light a fresh perspective on what it means to be an individual in the face of societal pressure.
To understand the value of having an identity is to feel its absence when it is gone. The
absence …show more content…
Her daughter, Sula’s mother, Hannah is watching the whole time. Eva painfully explains how she could not watch her baby boy waste away from his crippling drug addiction that he picked up after the horrors of war. Again She evokes raw emotion that encourages understanding and sympathy from the readers. The perspective transforms a seemingly cruel act into an act of desperation. Considering the recurring acts of violence like Eva’s throughout the story in context, Putnam suggests that “ By taking the violence forced on them and redirecting it, these characters redefine themselves as compellingly dominant women.” The women are characterized like birds as if to say the females of this time are like caged birds that find their freedom in their own way. They cannot easily be labeled as good or bad due to the origin of their motivation. The characters discover a sense of control in the oppressive environments the only way they know how–violence and chaos.
Sula and Nel’s home environments negatively influence the way they handle the drowning of the little boy, Chicken Little, marking a pattern of thinking that follows them through adulthood. When the girls realize Chicken Little is not going to resurface from the …show more content…
Evoking the bird imagery once again, Morrison shifts the perception of evil. For the Bottomites, “the purpose of evil [is] to survive it,” thus Sula is a dangerous force to be reckoned with as she puts Eva in a nursing home and sleeps with married men, including Jude (Morrison 89). Sula isolates herself by challenging all precepts of her old life, pushing people away. In "Experimental Lives:
Meaning and Self in Sula," Professor Samuels interprets that in the book “[evil] is inverted to become a sin against oneself; it is one’s failure to act existentially” (33) In other words, to lose one’s sense of self and to live without self-awareness is the true evil. Nel is more conforming to the societal expectations she once despised, and Sula is extreme in her rebellion against those same expectations but only one of them is truly considered evil, Nel. Ignoring her feelings, Nel loses control of her life as an adult and Sula, focusing on her feelings, loses restraint.
Identity is established by the power of choice, choosing for oneself rather than allowing others to dictate. Although society has a significant influence on one’s identity, Morrison also explores how individuals influence society in