Powerlessness In Sula And Their Eyes Were Watching God

Eternal Struggle with Powerlessness in Sula and Their Eyes Were Watching God
Is everyone really given an equal opportunity for success? So many different factors work against an individual. Think about all the things one does not have control over. People are held back by their race, gender, and history. In Zora Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God and Tori Morrison's Sula, both authors use metaphor, imagery, allusion, and arrangement to demonstrate their purpose; that purpose is to show that it is impossible for black women to entirely rise above powerlessness in their communities and reach their full potential due to the many things they cannot control.
To begin, Morrison uses metaphor in Sula to portray how Nel is helpless because

of the environment she has been placed in and through what she has encountered. Morrison compares Nel’s feelings to a tangled up ball of strings. It is “a ball of muddy strings, but without weight, fluffy but terrible in its malevolence” (Morrison 109). Nel feels helpless, and her feelings are portrayed as a tangled up mess, like a ball of strings. Nel finally notices this feeling that has always been there, all tangled up, after losing her husband, Jude, when he commits adultery. She never realized how much she had been worrying about losing her husband and how dependent she had become on him. “Morrison uses the image of a gray fur ball to symbolize Nel’s indistinct anxiety that grows into gradual self-awareness” (Zlogar). Morrison uses a mixed up ball to represent Nel’s feelings and worries and to show how confused and tied down she is. Nel figures out that she has always been helpless and powerless in her situation as a black woman.
Additionally, Morrison uses metaphor to demonstrate the hardships black people encounter because society views them as powerless animals. “When, he wondered, will those people ever be anything but animals, fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only mules didn’t kill each other the way niggers did” (Morrison 63). This is comparing wild animals with black people to show how society views them as equal, taking away their dignity as people. The unnamed bargeman assumes that Chicken Little, as a young, black child, was harshly killed by another black person because of his race. Chicken Little’s death was an accident, however, it is automatically presumed merely because he is black that it was done with malicious intent. “The bargeman immediately presumes that the child had been drowned by his parents and wonders if ‘those people’ will ‘even be anything but animals’” (Morrison and Lister 246). Morrison compares black people to wild beasts to convey the extreme hatred that black people experience for a factor out of their control. The society in Sula views black people, such as Nel and Sula, as inherently bad and believes that they should be stripped of their human dignity solely because of their skin color. Society equates their skin color to the hide of an animal.
Metaphor is also prevalent in Their Eyes Were Watching God when Hurston shows how black people are powerless because they have no connections.

“Us colored folks is branches without roots and that makes things come round in queer ways” (Hurston 16). Hurston compares black people to plants without roots to show how, like these plants, they have no connection to the world. Therefore, they have no power in the world. Janie, as a growing young woman said to be without roots, is expected to be abnormal and not as independent as a white woman would be due to her lack of ancestry on this continent. Janie is powerless because of this non-existent connection. “Lacking roots, then Nanny sees no real structure ordering life and society for blacks” (S. Jones 185). Society views blacks as people who have nothing holding them down because they have no roots. Hurston compares them to branches without roots to show that they cannot control their own lives. No one expects blacks, especially females, to find a way in society or have any

power.
Another instance of Hurston using metaphor is to demonstrate that black women are like mules who cannot think for themselves and have to be controlled. “De nigger women is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see” (Hurston 14). Hurston compares black women to mules to show how they are burdened and controlled by their owners with no sense of individuality. Society sees black women in the same way that they see animals, which is with no sense of human dignity. “The burden of this animal, hard-working and often unappreciated, is parallel in the situation of black women” (S. Jones 185). Black women are mules in that they are hardworking but never recognized as such, only as being completely dependent on males. Hurston makes this comparison to show that black women have even less power on their own.
In addition to metaphors, Morrison uses imagery in Sula to show how black females are viewed as the lowliest people in society because of their skin color and gender. “It was a fine cry-loud and long-but it had no bottom and it had no room just circles and circles of sorrow” (Morrison 174). Morrison uses vivid imagery to portray the despair Nel feels over her place in society and her situation and how she does not have the power to change it. One can hear this bottomless cry and almost picture it in its description as having many circles of sadness. No matter how much Nel cries this deep cry, no one will respond to it and nothing will change. “This image figures the primacy of circularity and repetition over the tyranny of linear time and the hierarchical social structures which marginalize the citizens of the Bottom” (Morrison and Lister 246). Hearing her cry helps one to understand how it really feels to be in her place. This imagery demonstrates how Nel is stuck, without power, in the social structures of the Bottom where she lives as a black woman.
Similarly, Morrison uses imagery in Sula to show how black women are automatically forced into having a maternal role.

“He expected his story to dovetail into milkwarm commiseration, but before Nel could excrete it, Sula said she didn’t know about that” (Morrison 103). Jude assumes Nel will just feel sorry for him automatically. Her expected response is described as milky, warm, and able to be excreted, like a mother nursing a baby. Women are expected to be the caretakers, never stating their real opinions. “In a novel populated by mothers, maternal imagery abounds: the image of Nel ‘excret[ing]’, ‘milk-warm commiseration’ for her husband” (Morrison and Lister 246). Women are expected to be maternal beings at the mercy of their husband and children and are not given the option of taking another route. This imagery highlights that black women do not have the power to choose a different path easily and are merely looked at as only having the power to be potential mothers, nothing

more.