When Two Make One in Sula by Toni Morrison

When Two Make One in Sula by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's novel Sula is about two young black girls that become close friends, but eventually split up and take different paths through life. Sula decides to go against social conventions and live a more independent, reckless life, while Nel on the other hand decides to marry and settle down. In the end both girls are nearly the same, even though they lived their lives very differently.

Both girls grew up in a majority black neighborhood known as the Bottom. This neighborhood is located up in the hills of Ohio, looking down on the wealthier white town of Medallion. The Bottom got its name from a time when a slave owner, disliking the land, persuaded one of his slaves that it was "the bottom of heaven- best land there is"(5). Ever since then more people chose to live in the Bottom and it became a thriving community.

Sula and Nel came from very contrasted families. Sula's mother was widowed, and "had a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her friends and neighbors"(42). She did not have many woman friends, because most of them disliked her for her attitude towards her relationships. Growing up in an environment where her mother had so many different men taught Sula that "sex was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable"(44). Nel's mother on the other hand, strived to be the pillar of the black community. She was a woman who "won all social battles with persistence and a conviction of the legitimacy of her authority"(18). She was a woman who tried her hardest to fit into an ideal social mold, and she taught her daughter the 'right' way to live.

The two girls became friends while they were in primary school, and they preferred the other's home life. Sula liked the "oppressive neatness"(29) while Nel "preferred Sula's wooly house"(29). They became inseparable, understanding the other's thoughts and actions, one completing the other. "They found relief in each other's personality"(53). Nel was always the calm one, in control, while Sula was uncontrollable. To save Nel from harassing boys, Sula once cut the tip of her finger off to scare them away, and when Sula accidentally threw a neighborhood boy into the water, Nel remained calm after they watched him drown.