Sula

by Toni Morrison

nightshade and blackberry

One is poison and the other is not

It stood in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now, but when black people lived there it was called the Bottom.

Juxtaposition. Interesting that it is called the Bottom. Is it symbolising that Black people are seen as being at the bottom of the totem pole?

1917,

WWI

Shadrack

Biblical character from Daniel who survivd being thrown into the furnace by the king of Babylon for his refusal to worship their idol.

wondering where the window was, and the river, and the soft voices just outside the door …

Some form of stockholm syndrome

It was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free. In this manner he instituted National Suicide Day.

Then, for no earthly reason, at least no reason that anybody could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood then or later, she smiled. Like a street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments before, Helene smiled.

The good black rhetoric? Which is a survival instinct

“I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.” Each time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut. “Me,” she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I want … I want to be … wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.”

Moment Nel finds her identity outside of her mum, but sadly, Nel grows up to be ordinary

Deep in its darkness and freezing stench she squatted down, turned the baby over on her knees, exposed his buttocks and shoved the last bit of food she had in the world (besides three beets) up his ass. Softening the insertion with the dab of lard, she probed with her middle finger to loosen his bowels. Her fingernail snagged what felt like a pebble; she pulled it out and others followed.

Eva's version of motherhood can be seen as brutal and perhaps links to her killing Plum later on. Perhaps this type of motherhood was too sacrificial for her and she could only do it for her childrn when they were young

Tar Baby, a beautiful, slight, quiet man who never spoke above a whisper. Most people said he was half white, but Eva said he was all white.

Juxtaposition

It was Hannah who found the bent spoon black from steady cooking.

Heroin!

made grating noises. Plum on the rim of a warm light sleep was still chuckling. Mamma. She sure was somethin’. He felt twilight. Now there seemed to be some kind of wet light traveling over his legs and stomach with a deeply attractive smell. It wound itself—this wet light—all about him, splashing and running into his skin. He opened his eyes and saw what he imagined was the great wing of an eagle pouring a wet lightness over him. Some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing, he thought. Everything is going to be all right, it said. Knowing that it was so he closed his eyes and sank back into the bright hole of sleep.

Come back to this

a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the kerosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight. Quickly, as the whoosh of flames engulfed him, she shut the door and made her slow and painful journey back to the top of the house.

What the FACK

They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream.

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.

“Sure you do. You love her, like I love Sula. I just don’t like her. That’s the difference.”

The water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank.

Did he just die???

still bemused by God’s curse and the terrible burden his own kind had of elevating Ham’s sons,

Hannah died on the way to the hospital.

2 of Eva's children died from being burnt. Was Hannah's death on purpose or an accident?

Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested.

Similar to Nel with chicken little dying

His fears lest his burst dream of road building discourage her were never realized.

?

Ajax was right about Nel. Except for an occasional leadership role with Sula, she had no aggression. Her parents had succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkle or splutter she had. Only with Sula did that quality have free reign, but their friendship was so close, they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s.

forty-eight inches tall for years now,

4 foot

What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones.

They seem to allow nature to take ove

Nature

Capitalised

Suggesting they are the same person

I laughed too because I knew you too, Jude. So how could you leave me when you knew me?”

Change to first person

She could not see it, but she knew exactly what it looked like. A gray ball hovering just there. Just there. To the right. Quiet, gray, dirty. A ball of muddy strings, but without weight, fluffy but terrible in its malevolence.

?

plague of robins

Why Robins?

big Daughter Elk

?

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman.

Amen to that

In a way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.

Much like Nel. More like blackberries

“You can’t do it all. You a woman and a colored woman at that. You can’t act like a man. You can’t be walking around all independent-like, doing whatever you like, taking what you want, leaving what you don’t.”

“Lonely, ain’t it?” “Yes. But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.”

Sula kind of ate her up I fear

blue-flannel

Many refrence to blue...

Now it seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity and compassion was only the tranquillity that follows a joyful stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the turbulence of Chicken Little’s body, so had contentment washed over her enjoyment.

Challenges binary thnking that Nel is blackberriees as this is giving nightshade

“Shall We Gather at the River”