Relationships In Sula

Love in Relationships
In the novel “Sula” by Toni Morrison two significant themes that contributed to the overall message of the novel include friendship and family. A friendship is an intimate relationship with another individual that is created and sustained voluntarily. In today’s society friendships are expected to contain qualities such as loyalty, empathy, encouragement, and understanding to be considered healthy. However, relationships with family members are usually involuntary and each member is expected to be nurturing, supportive, patient, trustworthy, and responsive. Love is expected to be present in both of these types of relationships and in “Sula” it was shown how love or the lack there of can impact the treatment of others.

Sula’s response to her mother catching on fire proved that she declined her love or even hated her. That novel states, “Sula was probably struck dumb, as anybody would be who saw he own mamma burn up. Eva said yes, but inside she disagreed and remained convinced that Sula had watched Hanna burn not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested” (78). Others could see that Sula did not actually look scared our worried by her mother’s excruciating pain. Instead she watched as if she did not want to end her mother’s suffering, but wanted to see her die. Most strangers would be compelled to save a life if possible, but Sula did not even try to save her own mother’s. This is because she did not accept her mother’s love because she craved something more unconditional. Sula felt the same way about her grandmother, which ultimately caused Eva to be sent to a nursing home. Sula exclaimed, “I ain’t never going to need you. Maybe one night when you dozing in that wagon flicking flies and swallowing spit, maybe I’ll just tip on up here with some kerosene and-who knows-you make the brightest flame of them all” (94). This proved that Sula hated her grandmother so much that she threatened to be the reason that she experienced the same painful and brutal death that two of Eva’s children