Yin and Yang in "Sula"

848 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Social norms psychological essay

"Sula" Yin and Yang is an ancient Chinese philosophy that says everything in the world works through opposing energies and that everything has its counter part which balances the world out. This idea of counter parts also carries into literature as shown in the book Sula by Toni Morrison. According to social conventions the character Nel is the yang (positive character/good) and Sula is the yin (negative character/evil). This is the way both characters are viewed on sole terms of how they conform to society. Nel is shown to be a good character because she plays a socially expectable role as a women and mother, while Sula conforms to no social stereotypes and let's almost nothing hold her back, thus she is viewed as evil. The social conventions that are set up in this book play out in a small black community in Ohio called "the bottom." The community itself formed when a white slave owner tricked his naive black slave into accepting hilly mountainous land that would be hard to farm and very troublesome instead of the actual bottom (valley) land that he was promised. The slave was told "when God looks down, it's the bottom. That's why we call it so. It's the bottom of heaven-best land there is"(4), and on this lie a community was formed. The community struggles geographically to survive, having to combat bad weather and encroaching whites who want to convert most of the town into a golf course. The town unites social as they band together against Sula and her actions. Nel follows all the stereotypes of what a woman should be. She is a simple God-fearing, church going women who marries young and is very domesticated, tending to the house and her children. Nel chooses to settle into the conventional female ... ... middle of paper ... ... Little, Nel is riddled with guilt. She clings even closer to social conventions in an attempt to reestablish herself as a good person. This guilt most likely comes from her strict authority respecting upbringing and her fear of being judged and seen as wrong. Nel is tormented by the young boys death and her mind is restless about it for years until she finally accepts some of the blame for the accident and stops blaming it all on Sula. Sula on the other hand, has no guilt over the accident. She sees what happened as a turn in life and does not feel like she is the cause of Chicken Little's death. She mourns his death and then moves on. Sula has a feminist spirit and refuses to melt into the typical mold of a women. Because of this she is hated by the town. The towns hatered against her actually ends up drawing them together in a way to face on evil, Sula

Show More
Related

  • Close Reading of the Two Holes Passage of Toni Morrison's Sula

    928 Words  | 2 Pages

    Toni Morrison’s novel Sula is rich with paradox and contradiction from the name of a community on top of a hill called "Bottom" to a family full of discord named "Peace." There are no clear distinctions in the novel, and this is most apparent in the meaning of the relationship between the two main characters, Sula and Nel. Although they are characterized differently, they also have many similarities. Literary critics have interpreted the girls in several different ways: as lesbians (Smith 8), as the two halves of a single person (Coleman 145), and as representations of the dichotomy between good and evil (Bergenholtz 4 of 9). The ambiguity of these two characters allows for infinite speculation, but regardless of how the reader interprets the relationship their bond is undeniable. The most striking example of their connection occurs right before the accidental death of Chicken Little. In the passage preceding his death, Nel and Sula conduct an almost ceremonial commitment to one another that is sealed permanently when "the water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank" (Morrison 61):

    Read More

  • The Deepest Meaning In Sula By Toni Morrison

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the novel it states, “ Still it was lovely up in the bottom.” (Morrison, 5) It was ironic that the bottom was really on top of a hill. Although, there was a much deeper meaning to the bottom being on top of the hill. The Bottom could be looked upon as an unexpected place. But the bottom became their home. The bottom had a deeper meaning because the African Americans believed the town was the “bottom of heaven”. The community as a whole grew together from the strength of one another. The bottom was thought of as the place the black people lived, although it was the place in which they found

    Read More

  • Sula

    1465 Words  | 3 Pages

    It all began in and around the year 1919. Sula Peace, the daughter of Rekus who died when she was 3years old and Hannah, was a young and lonely girl of wild dreams. Sula was born in the same year as Nel, 1910. Sula was a heavy brown color and had large eyes with a birthmark that resembled a stemmed rose to some and many varied things to others. Nel Wright, the daughter of Helene and Wiley, was and unimaginative girl living in a very strict and manipulated life. Nel was lighter in color than Sula and could have passed for white if she had been a few shades lighter she. A trip to visit her dying great-grandmother in the south had a profound effect on Nel’s life. In many ways the trip made her realize her selfness and look at things around her in a different light, eventually sowing the seeds that initiated the friendship between herself and Sula. The two girls met each other at Garfield Primary School after knowing each other at a distance for over five years. Nel’s mother had told her that she could not interact with Sula because of Sula’s mother sooty ways. The intense and sudden friendship between them which was to last many years was originally cultivated my Nel. The period in history and the mentality of the people in their immediate surroundings played an impressive part in the formulation of the friendship between Sula and Nel. When they first met at school, it was as if they were always destined to be friends.

    Read More

  • Sandra Cisneros's “Never Marry a Mexican”

    969 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...e relationship with men, as nothing but tools she can sharpen and destroy, lives through lust and an uncanny ability to blend into any social class makes her unique. Her character is proven as an unreliable narrator as she exaggerates parts of the story and tries to explain that she is in fact not guilty of being a mistress, but a person caught in a crossfire between two others.

    Read More

  • Mother-Daughter Relationships In Toni Morrison's Sula And Nel Wright

    791 Words  | 2 Pages

    Helene was raised by her grandmother because she mother was a prostitute in the New Orleans. When Helene has a family of her own, she refuses to make her background be known. Helene raises Nel with fear because she doesn’t want her to have the lifestyle she grew up in. Helene controls Nel’s life and makes her see the world how it is. Nel and her mother go on a train to New Orleans to attend the funeral for her great grandmother. On the train, Nel witnessed racial situation between her mother and the white conductor. “Pulling Nel by the arm, she pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in front of a wooden seat… at least no reason that anyone could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood,” (21). Nel was very uncomfortable throughout the trip and wasn’t able to communicate with her mother because she never learned how to since her mother was not supportive of her. Nel views her mother very negatively for the way she raised her. Nel starts to determine her life and great her identity when she became friends with Sula. The effect of negative maternal interactions on an individual is explained by Diane Gillespie and Missy Dehn Kubitschek as they discuss

    Read More

  • Good and Evil in Toni Morrison

    1419 Words  | 3 Pages

    Though she was seen as the town's outcasts, someone the community could measure themselves against to know their own goodness, Sula was the realest person. She wasn't someone who tried to be what she wasn't. She did not scorn others in the way they scorned her. In a way, she was more pious. There are other minor characters in which Morrison leaves the blame in the air. Eva killing her son, Ralph, to save him from himself, and his heroine addiction and Teapot's mother abusing and neglecting him until he was hurt because of Sula.

    Read More

  • Community and Survival in Sula

    1105 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sula by Toni Morrison is a very complex novel with many underlying themes. Some of the themes that exist are good and evil, friendship and love, survival and community, and death. In Marie Nigro's article, "In Search of Self: Frustration and Denial in Toni Morrison's Sula" Nigro deals with the themes of survival and community. According to Nigro, "Sula celebrates many lives: It is the story of the friendship of two African-American women; it is the story of growing up black and female; but most of all, it is the story of a community" (1). Sula contains so many important themes that it is hard to say which one is the most important. I agree with Marie Nigro when she says that Sula is a story about community. I believe that community and how the community of Bottom survives is an important theme of the story. But I do not believe that it is a central theme of the story. When I think back on the novel Sula in twenty years, I will remember the relationship and friendship between Nel and Sula. I will not remember the dynamics of the community.

    Read More

  • The Significance Of Friendship In Sulla And Nel's Friendship

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sula and Nel’s friendship in their childhood was beneficial for both of them. Sula’s meeting of Nel was fortunate, because they find a soul mate within each other. They are both the daughters of “distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers” (Morrison, 50). Both girls lack affection in their relationships with their mothers. They can’t find this affection in their relationships with their fathers either, because Sula’s father is dead while Nel’s father is away at sea. They find the affection they need with each other. Their friendship was a way to mother each other. Since they can’ find the support they need from their families with their families they began to support each other and figure out what each other need in their life. The significance

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Motherhood In Sula

    807 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the negative experiences that she has had with motherhood, Sula does not want to become a mother. She sees Hannah’s sadness and frustration with Eva and recognizes her poor relationship with Hannah and does not want to repeat it. Sula’s insufficient relationship with her mother is exposed when Sula watched her mother burn and die. Sula does not attempt to help her mother, she only stands silently and watches her mother die. Eva notices this but, “remained convinced that Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested” (78). This shows her lack of care for motherhood. She does not have kids and dies without having any. But during her life, she ends up in a similar situation as her mother She focuses only on men and people begin to hate her for this. She begins to take friends’ and neighbors’ husbands the same way Hannah did. Sula even turned on her only friend, Nel, and took her husband too. She is the reason that Nel’s husband left her. Sula adopted the same principles as her mother, and Hannah was shaped by Eva.

    Read More

  • Racism and Sexism in Toni Morrison's Sula

    1607 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sula has a feminist spirit and refuses to melt into the typical mold of a woman. She "discovered years before that [she was] neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to [her]" (52). Because of this she decides to lead her life on her own terms. Sula encounters both racism and sexism and is placed in a situation in which she has no release for her wild spirit. She cannot live out in the world with the freedoms of a man, but doesn't want to live as a stereotypically sheltered woman either. In attempting to break these boundaries she is hated by the town and viewed as an "evil" person by the community in which she lives.

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Sula Quotes

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    Given the title of the novel, Sula Peace is a complex and thought provoking character in Toni Morrison’s, Sula. Her thoughts and actions often contradict, leaving the reader unable to decipher whether Sula should be praised or demonized. As a child, Sula grows up in a chaotic household that is run by strong-willed women. Because of this constant commotion, Sula loves quiet and neat settings, which is shown through her behavior at Nel’s home. In the novel it says, “She had no center, no speck around which to grow” (Morrison 119). This quote points out how much her home life as a child affects her behavior as an adult. Her mother, Hannah, has almost no sense of right and wrong. Her promiscuous behavior is observed by Sula and sets the foundation

    Read More

  • Toni Morrison's Sula - Female Struggle for Identity

    2167 Words  | 5 Pages

    First there is the presence of the old stereotypical woman character, a woman split between the conventional and nontraditional roles of women.  No differences are apparent initially between Morrison's Sula and any other women's literature in the past.  Women are depicted either as docile servants to men, like Nel, or ball-busting feminist monsters like Sula.  The hidden aspect of the novel lies underneath these stereotypical surface roles, in the incomprehensible and almost inappropriate bond of the two women.  In the final scene of Sula, Nel comes to the realization that the emptiness inside her is due to the loss of Sula, not Jude (Morrison 174).  Her friendship with Sula is all that matters.

    Read More

  • The Theme Of Good Vs. Evil In Toni Morrison's Sula

    618 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Toni Morrison’s novel Sula, the theme of the story is good versus evil. It’s embodied into the story in various forms to question what defines right and wrong. Good versus evil is presented in forms that are understood on the surface and beneath the surface which gives it multiple meanings. The relationship between Sula and Nel is the main expression of this theme, however, there are also many other contributors such as color schemes, gender and race differences, and life and death. This theme sheds light on the significance and interpretation of issues of everyday reality which includes controversies related to identity struggles, super natural forces, the impact and relevance of upbringing on development, family structure, and racism. Morrison demonstrates the importance of good versus evil with her writing in the way that she overlaps them and interprets them as products of one another. The friendship of Sula and Nel creates a presence of good and evil within their relationship to each other and their community.

    Read More

  • Essay On Segregation In To Kill A Mockingbird

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... of Maycomb and other towns, primarily across the south, races were only to use their exclusive facilities. A place meant level inequalities only added to the immense imbalance of superiority; this place was a courtroom, where inequality was supposed to be diminished. As white supremacy developed, blacks weren’t as socially accepted and were mistreated. The novel brought focus to a multitude of injustices that would essentially spur change to create a more integrated society in the future. Just as the novel explained how change was in the making, history itself during this time shows how assimilation was in the working. Even though today racial integration is very prominent there are still instances where people are discriminated. Segregation, although not as furious of a fire as it was during this time period, is still an ignited spark in some people’s souls today.

    Read More

  • Relationship Between Nel And Sula in Toni Morrison's Sula

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    The relationship between Nel and Sula begins during their adolescent years. Though they are complete opposites, they seem to work well with each other, depending on one another for comfort and support. The two spend almost all of their time together, learning from one another and growing as a result. They take solace in the presence of one another, finding comfort in what the other finds bothersome and using the lifestyle of the one another to compensate for their shortcomings. When Sula first visits Nel's home, "Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comf...

    Read More

More about Yin and Yang in "Sula"

Open Document