Sula And Nel Comparison

Toni Morrison’s novel Sula, examines a wide range of topics, delving particularly into morality, the black female experience, and friendship. The narrative follows childhood best friends, Nel and Sula, as they navigate life in the Bottom, a black community in Ohio. Although inseparable as children, even undivided after accidentally killing a two-year-old boy, they follow divergent paths as adults. Nel leads a life of conformity; Sula does the opposite. An enigma to all, society tries to make sense of Sula through her birthmark. It is a blank slate onto which people project whichever meaning most suits them. The different ways characters perceive Sula’s birthmark reveals more about the interpreter

Being oppressed by her mother, Nel has an attraction to Sula's carefree environment which, unlike her own, lacks any oppression. Likewise, Sula has an attraction to Nel's peaceful and orderly environment. They both desire something that the other does not have, and that's where such a strong attraction comes from. Together, they are perfect- Nel finds in Sula the youthfulness and the fun she's missing, and Sula finds order and stability in Nel.

The climax of the story is when Nel finally confronts Sula. Each girl carried demons, guilt, and frustration over their lives and their choices. Nel finally vents her anger and pain and asks for an explanation from Sula. Nel's " thighs were truly empty and dead too, and it was Sula who had taken the life from them" (Morrison pg. 110-111). After leaving Eva at the home, Nel is so upset that she heads to Sula's grave. She sadly thinks about how none of the townspeople mourned her death. Nel calls out for Sula and it is then she finally forgives her for cheating with Jude. She starts crying, for the first time in years. Nel finally finds peace by grieving for Sula. When reading that part I think it was then that she realized it was Sula who she was missing & not Jude. When reading the story I couldn’t help but feel mixed emotions for Sula. It was a combination of sadness for all

Nel and Sula’s relationship is a complex one, which allows for the novel to become incredibly in depth and driven by interesting characters. Sula’s relationships with her mother and grandmother are opposite of Nel’s relationship with her mother. This is, perhaps, why their personalities differ so much once they reach adulthood. Both become their mothers.

In the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison we follow the life of Sula Peace through out her childhood in the twenties until her death in 1941. The novel surrounds the black community in Medallion, specifically "the bottom". By reading the story of Sula’s life, and the life of the community in the bottom, Morrison shows us the important ways in which families and communities can shape a child’s identity. Sula not only portrays the way children are shaped, but also the way that a community receives an adult who challenges the very environment that molded them. Sula’s actions and much of her personality is a direct result of her childhood in the bottom. Sula’s identity contains many elements of a strong, independent feminist

Two young girls, coalescing on a grass-laden field while lying on their stomachs, dig a hole in unspoken harmony. A picture of youth and innocence, this scene depicts an innocuous moment which the two girls share as a result of their juvenescence--or does it? In Toni Morrison 's Sula, this scene, among others, appears at first to be both irrelevant to the novel’s underlying theme and out of place with regard to the rest of the plot. Yet, when analyzed further, the literary devices that Morrison uses in these scenes bring readers to a vastly different conclusion. These scenes serve as windows into the mind of Morrison and even into the larger themes present in the text. So, perhaps two girls sharing a seemingly casual experience is not as

Despite being presented as opposites of good and evil, Nel and Sula are actually quite similar, as both Nel and Sula posses the traits that defined the other, effectively blurring the lines between good and evil. As young girls, Nel pushed herself to become friends with Sula in the first place as “Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comfortable in t with Sula, who loved it and would sit on the red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time… As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s wooly house”(29). As a child, Nel yearned to be free and independent, and to be her own individual self separate from who her mother expects her to be. Sula however already lives this life of living in a non-traditional home and

After getting married, Sourdi and Mr. Chhay moved a state away to Iowa, putting an even larger strain on Sourdi and Nea’s relationship. Sourdi did not want to get married to Mr. Chhay as she was still in love with Duke, but it wasn’t in Sourdi to fight back and go against her mother’s wishes— something Nea would have easily done. Nearly two years after Sourdi got married, Nea picks up a call from Sourdi one evening

In the story "A Thousand Splendid Suns", we follow the life of two different girls, Mariam and Laila. They both lead two very different lives that spiral into two entirely different directions. They had different education, different influences throughout their lives, and

As Nea interacts with the other characters, she is always brash and rarely takes the time to understand their side of a situation. In many cases, she lies to manipulate people and her situation to achieve her selfish goals. Nea fakes her remorse about attacking the customer just to please her sister: “I was glad I’d stabbed that man. I was only crying because life was so unfair.” (72) When Nea needs to find a way to Sourdi’s home she lies to Duke about the severity of the situation because she knows deep down that it is not as bad as she wants to believe. If Sourdi was in trouble, it would ultimately mean that Nea could get her sister back. Nea fabricates this story to make up for the loss she felt when Sourdi moved on and abandoned her. She would rather believe that it was someone else who caused her sister to mature and move on than to believe it was her own fault or that

In chapter 1919, Nel’s mother, Helene and her family are introduced. Her grandmother raised Helene to her very best unlike her mother Rochelle, who was a creole whore and did not take care of her. Helene later married a seaman named, Wiley Wright. This marriage in the story was a somewhat of a success in terms of a heteronormative institution because they had raised Nel making her “obedient and polite” (Morrison 23). Unlike Helene, Sula’s mother, Hannah Peace, never really gave orders and directions to Sula, and Nel enjoyed this while Sula enjoyed staying at Nel’s tidy and neat home. Before Eva peace gave birth to her children and took in the Dewey brothers, she had married a man named, BoyBoy. Their marriage was a disaster as it was filled with unfaithfulness, lack of

On the other hand, it could be articulated that the female characters in both the novels have proved their mental instabilities, individualisms and rebelliousness have disturbed the lives of others. Moreover, it could be analyzed in the novels that both the author in their social context has explained the dark secrets of the life of individuals.

Their attraction toward each other grows stronger each year, eventually becoming so strong that they become one. “Their friendship was so close; that they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the others” (Morrison 83). Throughout this book we see Sula and Nel as one, as the people did that knew them. Even Eva at some point says to Nel, “You. Sula. What’s the difference” (Morrison 168)? Eva makes this reference to Nel and Sula being as one when she is taking about Chicken Little drowning in the river.

Nel is the only person that Sula ever truly cared about. Yet, she made the decision of sleeping with Jude when she could have chose to not do it in the first place. This left Nel without a husband and Nel’s children without a father to take care of them. So, Sula’s decision also impacted the next generation. Sula ruined Nel’s

Some of the story’s meaning and values involves around race, friendship and the abandonment began to emerge as the plot thickens, and more messages became hidden and remain unrecognized in the story. It’s a controversial story, which conveys an important clue for what race is and if by any means really matters in the scheme of life. She also manipulate the story’s lingual authority to describe those two women’s races interchangeable bringing about the confusion of the readers, and utilized the character’s activities and dialogue during the friend’s gatherings to prove the equality theme between races. Toni Morrison utilized the awkwardness of the two women’s gatherings combined together with the words spoken by the ladies to portray the perplexity of race throughout the