Toni Morrison's novels famously give voice to black political, social, and moral consciousness. His novels deal primarily with the issues and concerns of black heritage and futures, and all the triumphs and tragedies of power and identity in between. Morrison uses the same processes of writing and characterization as a tool for negotiating power and identity in his novel Sula. His racial and political explorations can be effectively deepened and complicated for the reader by considering his language as a tool of black action. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "Before [Shadrack] on a tray was a large tin plate divided into three triangles. In one triangle was rice, in another was meat, and in the third was stewed tomatoes... Shadrack stared at the soft colors that filled these triangles: the lumpy white of the rice, the quivering tomatoes, the gray-brown flesh was contained in the clean balance of the triangles a balance that reassured him, transferred part of his balance So reassured that the white , the red and brown would stay where they were - they wouldn't explode or get out of their confined areas - he suddenly felt hungry and looked around at his hands" (p. 8). The divided meal that Morrison describes here captures the simple conceptions of race and race relations in the United States that have long existed in place of any deep understanding. On Shadrack's plate, browns, whites, and reds (or, roughly speaking, African-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, and Native Americans) exist in perfect balance when separated and contained without the possibility of interacting. Balance gives Shadrack some peace of mind, but that balance should not be read as support for segregation. Shadrack is a sick and mentally confused man and only because of his weakness is the balance calming. Morrison makes explicit the image of each of these separate triangles as relatively undesirable because they exist alone: ​​"All their repugnance was contained in the perfect balance of the triangles." In itself, each triangle is an incomplete and "repugnant" meal. Separated, they are no less miserable to eat, but their balance gives Shadrack a false sense of their edibility. Viewing triangles as separation of the races, such containment gives nothing more than a falsely copacetic sense of race relations. Food may be separated by barriers, but will begin to interact once inside Shadrack. Likewise, there may be racial barriers in the United States, but there is never a shortage of interaction. Containments and barriers attempt to define an appropriate sense of place. However, racial tensions and conventions as they have been defined in the United States cannot be contained by physical barriers. This pervasiveness of racial conventions has a great influence on Morrison's creations in this novel. With these false barriers, a sense of place is created for Sula's characters in a place called The Bottom. The very founding of The Bottom as a black city is the result of interaction with whites who promised that The Bottom, ironically located on the top of a hill, is ideal because it is "the bottom of heaven - the best land that gives us be" (p. 5 ). The Bottom proves to be a largely worthless area of ​​land, and the city's decay and lack of value are constant throughout the novel, with the novel opening and closing with the city's destruction and demise. Stylistically, opening the novel with this sense of decay helps set the tone of loss in the novel that reverberates most devastatinglywhen Shadrack's promise of permanence --- i.e. his comment to Sula, "Always" --- is long forgotten and unfulfilled. . Morrison denies permanence to the city as a means of denying permanence to the sense of home. Home is defined through people and emotions, not through space. For Bottom blacks, even when they get to the top (meaning they are above whites in position), they are still at the "bottom." Living high up in a place called the Bottom offers a confusing sense of place in the world. Such a confusion of locations fuels racial tensions in the United States and the tensions of Sula's characters. Part of Sula's misery is her loss of sense of place. She disappears for ten years, finding no home in any city and returning to the Bottom, not because it was a home for her, but because it was the last of her options. Helene Wright, Nel Wright's mother, also characterizes this confused sense of place. His confusion lies not in where he defines his physical home, but rather in where he defines his social place. After receiving harsh words and treatment from a white train conductor, "Like a street puppy wagging his tail right at the doorframe of the butcher's shop he was chased away from only moments before," Helene smiled. She smiled dazzlingly and coquettishly into the conductor's salmon-colored face" (p. 21). Helene smiles out of a sense of submission, trying to appeal to the white male conductor's approval, almost as if to apologize for her being a black woman. The simile used by Morrison is particularly effective because the comparison of Helene's actions to those of a puppy highlights that the response is automatic and even stupid, a symbol of her internalization of submission. Her style and mannerisms are very own also serve as an excuse for her Creole, legacy of freedom of being black of which she is ashamed This confusion of places in society does not go unchecked by those who are in a position to give her a place: the two black soldiers who saw her smile. subdued. the train “seemed struck” (page 21) and the people of Medallion actually changed her name to Helen in pronunciation (page 18). belong to these people. This concern with Helene's name is only part of the focus on name constructions, meanings, and origins as a primary tool of commentary in Sula. Names have long held a mythological importance in societies as they reflect and influence the fate and personality of those to whom they are given. They. Names for African Americans are much more important due to the roots of slavery which often denied enslaved people the freedom to take and give names at the discretion of enslaved people. Slaves' surnames were usually taken from their master's surname, denying any sense of genuine lineage or shared family identity. Additionally, enslaved people were generally given Christian names, all but erasing African naming traditions and rituals that gave special meaning to newborns for the rest of their lives. As a testament to the pervasive racism that informed the institution of slavery, enslaved people were sometimes given names that would otherwise have been reserved only for barn animals, such as Jumper or Milky. This history of name denial and perversion is important for understanding the naming tool in Sula. The book uses names as an act of resistance to restore to black individuals the destiny and personhood that the naming tradition grants them. Interestingly, Morrison also uses names as a tool to represent racial conventions and his owncharacterization and commentary on them. The importance of names is evident in the title of the novel itself. Sula is an essential character and much of the book's content centers around her, but it would be impossible to say that there aren't other characters as central to the book as Sula is. Entire sections and chapters are dedicated to the lives of Shadrack, Eva, Hannah, Helene and especially Nel. Although the novel is written in the voice of an omniscient third-person narrator, it shifts into Shadrack's perception of reality (while remaining in third-person) in its main section (p. 11) and notably shifts into first-person narration. of the internal dialogue during the scene where Nel captures Jude and Sula. Fluidity in narrative voices and perception is a narrative method that appeared in Western literature before Morrison, but its use in Sula specifically works to reflect the communal nature of storytelling that is common to African-American call-and-response aesthetics, in in which the speaker invites listeners to become active listeners and therefore also speakers. With such a diverse focus on characters, why then is the novel named exclusively after Sula? I argue that the title is such not because it suggests that the Sula character is the most important, but that the title is Sula because of the meaning of the name. “Sula” is a North African name meaning “peace.” Essentially the name Sula Peace means “Peace Peace” and the repetition highlights the importance of the meaning, functioning as a sort of song that the gravestones of the same name read as Nel's (p. 171). Sula's character, upon her return to the Bottom as an adult, is vilified as a devil. According to the people of the city, "...in their secret awareness of Him, He was not the three-faced God of whom they sang. They knew well enough that He had four, and the fourth explained Sula" (p. 118). The city considered Sula immoral, with no sense of purpose or place. She was a pariah in the city because she didn't care about anything and therefore represented a dangerous threat to every relationship and institution. But in their inability to understand her and in their fear (and even their hatred of her), the people of the city of Sula were able to define themselves. They tried to live in opposition to her in every way, and in doing so, they became more moral, kind, and thoughtful. Sula's threat gave people a sense of morality and commitment to their relationships and the city. He brought them peace, as his name and title suggest. Nel Wright, Sula's best friend, also bears a name that Morrison loads up with suggestions. Sula and Nel can be read as two halves of a whole person. Eva's comment to Nel during Nel's visit to Eva's retirement home suggests the inseparability of the two: "You. Sula. What's the difference?" (p. 168). Nel's surname might therefore suggest that she was the "right" half of the one person Sula and Nel created - that she was the moral and reasonable half. But to accept this is to accept Sula's demonization as half immoral and unreasonable. Sula instead functions to transcend the limited conceptions of "entitlement" that the townspeople and white, Christian society have created for black women. Nel is "right" then, in the sense that she is the black female as the classification allows her to be, not necessarily as she should be. «Now Nel belonged to the city and all its streets» (p. 120). Sula is dramatized as a tragic heroine because she cannot find a way to function in the transcendence of her role, but that does not mean that transcending the limited social role of the black woman is not ideal. It is at the end of the novel that Nel recognizes his sense of loss as grief over losing Sula, not Jude or the life Nel had with him. It is with this recognition thathe can finally mourn his true loss and give voice to true pain. Giving voice to black femininity is essential in Sula and it is here that Nel's surname takes on the other profound suggestion, "write." In a twisted twist of comedy and surrealism, Morrison creates the three Deweys: three young black men taken in by Eva, Sula's grandmother, and all named Dewey by her. The Deweys become a trinity, three people who identify as one, and in this sense, their shared name realizes a sense of family. But shared identity limits them, as the Deweys never grow into individuals, and indeed Morrison denies them even growth in size and mind: "They have been forty-eight inches tall now for years, and though their size was unusual, it wasn't" unheard of. The realization was based on the fact that they remained boys in mind" (p. 84). Denied individuality from the beginning, the Deweys never develop it on their own because they have been mentally paralyzed by the association of their names. With the Deweys , Morrison reaffirms the sense of shared identity that is important to names, as well as the fate and personality that are determined by names. Because the Deweys share a name, they share the one thing that has the power to differentiate them, and so Morrison emphasizes the importance of name and individuality through this trio of one. Although his appearance is brief, Chicken Little plays an important role in defining the lives and personalities of Sula and Nel. Chicken Little's accidental killing Sula and Nel's silence about it are important factors in their development as conscious, moral figures. Chicken Little's name is reminiscent of the demeaning stable animal names given to blacks resulting from the institution of slavery. Morrison allows Chicken Little to be demeaned with such a name to represent the continued presence of racist ideologies that are so pervasive. which were actually internalized by the blacks themselves, who are the ones who gave this little boy his name. The name suggests more than a history of slavery. It's a name designed around the stereotypical racial convention of the pickaninny, a young black man depicted as primitive, dirty, ignorant, and ultimately expendable. Beginning in the time of slavery and throughout the early 20th century, popular songs and literature in America included depictions of dirty pickaninnies, always in the woods, fields, near rivers, or some other similar location (to represent them as primitive). and similar to animals), being killed or otherwise injured or insulted. Chicken Little's death falls into the pickaninny convention as dirty (he picks his nose throughout the scene), animalistic (his death is a drowning), and irrelevant (the expendable boy is picked up by a white man who has no consideration for his body, and the truth of his death is silenced). Morrison recreates the cruel pickaninny convention to destroy it. The characters in the story may not give much thought to his death, but the narrator treats the scene with a level of horror that brings back to the reader the importance of the individual's life that goes beyond the racial convention he follows. Morrison crafts the scene with a delicacy that preserves the innocence of Chicken Little, who unwittingly sails off to his death, emitting a "sparkling laugh" (p. 61) that reverberates in the air like a disturbing irony. Stereotypes and racial conventions fuel the characterizations of Sula's main actors. The hypersexual black woman is a harmful stereotype that stems from the times of slavery, when black women were seen as sexual demons complicit in their relationships with white slave masters (this of course ignores the lack of choice that most of these women.