By the time Sula is on her death bed, they have gone to being foils to each other. For instance, when Sula had returned to Medallion Nel had ruminated, “… talking to Sula had always been a conversation with herself… Sula never competed; she simply helped others define themselves.” And we feel that however genuine her happiness at getting her old friend back, it is about herself – Sula made her laugh, made her see old things in new ways, in whose presence she felt clever... Sure there’s gratitude but there’s also a sense of herself as defined by the other. Sula does slightly better. She, who had drifted back to Medallion partly because Nel is there, defines herself at the expense of Nel only after breaking up the latter’s marriage – “she and Nel were not one and the same thing…. Now Nel was one of them.” Sula feels that now Nel belongs to the town and “all of its ways.” For, by the time Sula is dying, Nel has become the ‘good’ woman. “Virtue, bleak and drawn, was her only mooring”, which “hid from her the true motives of her charity” in visiting her one-time friend. On the other hand, Sula is termed “devil all right” at a social meeting of the women in Medallion. The town had united as a community against the evil Sula represented. After her death, they fall apart.
Morrison asks – how easy is it to stick to the straight and narrow when there is no other who would help the self to reinforce its sense of being virtuous? How much of being good is to do with defining oneself for purposes of gaining social approbation? When one is powerless in society as Sula is, how important is it to be known to have a personality rather than as one who was merely a product of circumstances or “good”?
Morrison undermines Nel – a faithful wife, an adequate mother and a responsible member of the church – by detailing how the thing she mourns most when her husband leaves is the lost sex, how her bear love for her children almost drives them away and how quickly her benign concern for Eva Peace turns sour when the latter probes her on Chicken Little’s death. Before the book closes, Sula’s wronged grandmother asks Nel about Chicken Little’s downing, “Tell me how you killed that little boy…. You. Sula. What’s the difference? .... Just alike. Both of you. Never was no difference between you.” Nel is not spared the exercise of probing her own conscience.
"But it was there anyway, as it had always been, the old feeling and the old question. The good feeling she had had when Chicken’s hands slipped. She hadn’t wondered about that in years. “Why didn’t I feel bad when it happened? How come it felt so good to see him fall?”
All these years she had been secretly proud of her calm, controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable, her compassion for Sula’s frightened and shamed eyes. Now it seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity and compassion was only the tranquility that follows a joyful stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the turbulence of Chicken Little’s body, so had contentment washed over her enjoyment."
Morrison employs sexual imagery – Nel feels good about herself when someone else is suffering, or worse dying, and her enjoyment is sexual. This is how she assuages her own feelings of powerlessness. Sula, who could be reduced to a mess when Chicken Little drowns, grows into someone who could, despite attempts to transcend powerlessness through education and travel, not escape.
"…hers was an experimental life – ever since her mother’s remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the middle. The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow."
Sula, for all her outlaw status, is someone lacking in real strength and courage. Possibly driven away from the higher pursuits she sets out for (on her friend’s wedding day) by a more powerful world which she grapples with for 10 years, she destroys those in her sphere of influence. And she meets with no opposition. When Nel means to but doesn’t ask, “How come you did it Sula?” i.e. take Jude away from her, the latter “looked bored as she sucked her teeth. ‘Well, there was this space in front of me, behind me, in my head. Some space. And Jude filled it up. That’s all. He just filled up the space.” Her head is not full of platitudes and teachings young girls’ heads usually are full of. It is easy for her to take the wide road to hell. (In fact, her grandmother had said to her, “hellfire don’t need lighting and it’s already burning in you…”) She is looking for completion, but looks in all the wrong places.
"In a way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."
Sula harbors some very violent thoughts for Ajax, the man for whom she discovers the meaning of possession. After Ajax leaves her, she ruminates “It’s just as well he left. Soon I would have torn the flesh from his face just to see if I was right about the gold and nobody would have understood that kind of curiosity.” As she is liberated from her feelings for Ajax, she sings to herself, “I have sung all the songs all the songs I have sung all the songs there are.” On her deathbed she asks a startling question in that final conversation with her friend.
“How you know?” Sula asked.
“Know what?” Nel still wouldn’t look at her.
“About who was good. How you know it was you?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was me.”
Morrison asks – how easy is it to stick to the straight and narrow when there is no other who would help the self to reinforce its sense of being virtuous? How much of being good is to do with defining oneself for purposes of gaining social approbation? When one is powerless in society as Sula is, how important is it to be known to have a personality rather than as one who was merely a product of circumstances or “good”?
Morrison undermines Nel – a faithful wife, an adequate mother and a responsible member of the church – by detailing how the thing she mourns most when her husband leaves is the lost sex, how her bear love for her children almost drives them away and how quickly her benign concern for Eva Peace turns sour when the latter probes her on Chicken Little’s death. Before the book closes, Sula’s wronged grandmother asks Nel about Chicken Little’s downing, “Tell me how you killed that little boy…. You. Sula. What’s the difference? .... Just alike. Both of you. Never was no difference between you.” Nel is not spared the exercise of probing her own conscience.
"But it was there anyway, as it had always been, the old feeling and the old question. The good feeling she had had when Chicken’s hands slipped. She hadn’t wondered about that in years. “Why didn’t I feel bad when it happened? How come it felt so good to see him fall?”
All these years she had been secretly proud of her calm, controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable, her compassion for Sula’s frightened and shamed eyes. Now it seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity and compassion was only the tranquility that follows a joyful stimulation. Just as the water closed peacefully over the turbulence of Chicken Little’s body, so had contentment washed over her enjoyment."
Morrison employs sexual imagery – Nel feels good about herself when someone else is suffering, or worse dying, and her enjoyment is sexual. This is how she assuages her own feelings of powerlessness. Sula, who could be reduced to a mess when Chicken Little drowns, grows into someone who could, despite attempts to transcend powerlessness through education and travel, not escape.
"…hers was an experimental life – ever since her mother’s remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the middle. The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow."
Sula, for all her outlaw status, is someone lacking in real strength and courage. Possibly driven away from the higher pursuits she sets out for (on her friend’s wedding day) by a more powerful world which she grapples with for 10 years, she destroys those in her sphere of influence. And she meets with no opposition. When Nel means to but doesn’t ask, “How come you did it Sula?” i.e. take Jude away from her, the latter “looked bored as she sucked her teeth. ‘Well, there was this space in front of me, behind me, in my head. Some space. And Jude filled it up. That’s all. He just filled up the space.” Her head is not full of platitudes and teachings young girls’ heads usually are full of. It is easy for her to take the wide road to hell. (In fact, her grandmother had said to her, “hellfire don’t need lighting and it’s already burning in you…”) She is looking for completion, but looks in all the wrong places.
"In a way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings; had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."
Sula harbors some very violent thoughts for Ajax, the man for whom she discovers the meaning of possession. After Ajax leaves her, she ruminates “It’s just as well he left. Soon I would have torn the flesh from his face just to see if I was right about the gold and nobody would have understood that kind of curiosity.” As she is liberated from her feelings for Ajax, she sings to herself, “I have sung all the songs all the songs I have sung all the songs there are.” On her deathbed she asks a startling question in that final conversation with her friend.
“How you know?” Sula asked.
“Know what?” Nel still wouldn’t look at her.
“About who was good. How you know it was you?”
“What you mean?”
“I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was me.”
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