Life is Liminal: Sula and the Nature of Answers
Author: Toni Morrison
Stunned by the hauntingly elegant hardcover image of a beautiful woman, hands defiantly on her hips, fields in the distance, a dead robin suspended mystically from her neck, Sula intrigued me as a child and I loved looking at my mother’s unread copy and studying the face of the proud yet somehow wearied woman. As an adult now, reacquainting myself with all of the classics and renowned authors that I somehow missed, I decided that after a few enjoyable excerpts from Toni Morrison in college, it was time I read the author in her entirety. Sula, despite all the warnings, was the obvious choice for me. Finally, I’d reveal the mystery behind that stunning woman – or would I walk away with more questions?
The story begins, one ostensibly of a place high in the hills called the Bottoms, given to the black denizens by their former slave masters because the region is arid and not desirable. From here, the macrocosm begins to shrink, we meet the people, encounter the town traditions (such as National Suicide day) and finally, fall for two devoted young girls, best friends Sula Peace and Nel Wright.
Once known to have cut the tip of her finger off, threatening bullies away from her friend, Sula is the wild child with a decidedly loose mother and a demented family with a bad history and a beautiful, one legged grandmother. Nel, however, is the good girl and paragon of decency. Despite the diversity of experience and daily life, both girls are inseparable, feeling and thinking the same, coming into their desire for men at the same time. They even live through an accidental murder together, keeping the secret to both of their graves as time progresses and they grow from children to women to old women and finally, at least for one, to death.
Defining Sula is difficult, although the friendship between Nel and Sula and their divergent pathways in life is undoubtedly the main story. However, numerous side stories including Shadrack, the veteran suffering from PTSD and looking for an escape in life through a day dedicated to suicide, Sula’s eccentric grandmother, and ultimately the town itself. Literary criticism no doubt can provide a more accurate reading with articles ranging from touting Sula as a staple of black feminism, a representation of emerging black community, a look between two sides of one person, etc. etc. etc. In my opinion the novel is like life: complicated with no clear cut answer, situations that can be read and misread from multiple angles, connections that are tenuous and fractured yet disturbingly lasting. Sula is the type of novel that can be read and re-read, each time emerging with new meanings to the situations. What is evident from the beginning, however, is that the story is not about just delivering a message, as so much acclaimed literary fiction can be, but it’s about the people and the characters who populate this vivid world and return to haunt us with their questions, their longings, their desire for connection and fear of it.
There is no elegant way to put it – this world is fucked up from the beginning when we meet Shadrack right through to Sula’s grandmother and her extreme manner of dealing with undesirable traits in her children. The epic, subversive wrongness of the narrative comes with Sula and Nel’s secret – the accidental murder. These threads of stark brutality stand against the beauty of a normal growing up and give the novel an underside that reflects later in the ideas of the whorish seductress Sula and Nel, the good wife and moral abider of the accepted way of life. Were not both bound by a dark past? And did not Sula, perhaps, show more compassion at that moment and then later, none at all. How do we explain these shifting of roles and the good and bad inherent in people?
A brief about of Internet research reveals Sula as one of Morrison’s exceptionally “difficult” works and I must admit, in the conclusion there was a certain desolation – a sense that I was missing something but I am not sure that sense was not intended. The complexity of the girl’s friendships and differing lives, including the eventual falling out, speaks more toward the depths of a person and the unknowable nature of relationships and life. This is where the narrative sings strong and Sula, a character whom readers would normally loath, shines in her flawed humanity as does the ever righteous Nel. We ultimately cannot judge and are forced to wonder – what does it all mean? And this, I think is what Morrison is asking us to do – see the complexities of good and evil and the fact that we are never truly able to judge one another or, conversely, rid ourselves of the darkness in our own spirits. That which is bad is the flip side of that which is good in our personalities and like a bouncing penny, we are always flipping between the two extremes, seeking an equilibrium and a searching for a final solution that never tilts out.
The answer is ultimately that there is no true answer we will ever gain for why people do what they do and no one is truly satisfied with their own choices. It’s deep and chaotic and effecting while not ultimately satisfying because Morrison throws the fact that we want answers right back in our faces. Why begins the tale and why ends the tale and that is, to me, the true appeal and true difficulty of this novel.
The audio book version, sadly without the stunning 1970s cover art that was the original reason I picked up the novel, is read by Toni Morrison herself and is the quintessence of the experience. Morrison’s voice, pleasing in and among itself, highlights the central elements and brings the characters alive as the author saw them.
An experience not to be missed, Sula has enticed me to continue trying further works of Morrison’s. Highly recommended.
- Frances Carden
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