Sula by Toni Morrison
May. 14th, 2025 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_oonmoonMorrison really is for more mature readers. I first read this when I was younger and I couldn't appreciate it. Reading it now as a (slightly) more mature reader, I find that there is so much packed into such a tiny book and even then, I still find that I need more knowledge and experience to fully appreciate this novel. I usually don't look into the author's writing process or the analyses of other readers but this time around I looked up reviews and watched some Morrison interviews. I must say that doing so really allows you to bask in the afterglow of finishing a good novel. There were some parts of Sula that I was initially uncertain about but which I now find to be indispensable in the novel. I'd love to continue this practice of looking into the "behind the scenes" of a novel to really understand it.
I think more than anything, Sula has opened my mind to a different way of reading. There are "unrealistic" elements in an otherwise realistic story that could throw you off if you don't examine it closely. It reminds me of the lessons George Saunders mentions in his book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain that everything in the story must advance the plot in a non-trivial way. In Morrison's Sula, you have to constantly be asking yourself why the events are presented in this way or why the characters act the way they do. Otherwise, you may finish the book with a distaste for Sula the character. After all, Sula is a remarkably unrealistic and unlikable character. Why is Sula unlikable? Why does Nell appear to the reader as the "good person"? Why do we think this?
In Sula, the meaning you associate with one thing is constantly being challenged. National Suicide Day may initially sound like a badly-worded holiday to bring awareness to the importance of mental health but it is a "holiday" founded by Shadrack to release him of the burden of the surprise of death. He calls for a single day in which people can die without frightening him of its unexpectedness. By the end of the novel, several people die unexpectedly in an accident brought on by the mania of participating in the march for National Suicide Day. Fire featured twice in the novel and is related both times to love even as it ends in death: Eva burning her son to save him from himself and Eva jumping off a window in an attempt to save Hannah from burning to death. Perhaps the most jarring is Nell, who is presented as the "good" one, is revealed to have felt excited, almost relishing, at the drowning of Chicken Little. Unlikable Sula who is an independent and modern woman (characteristics that are typically touted as objectively good by modern standards) dies by the end of the book having lost a man she attempted to keep by being traditional and having lost her only friend.
Even Morrison finds Sula a deplorable character. In an interview, she has this to say about Sula as a character:
This feels very different from the contemporary idea of 'feminism' in which a woman does not owe anyone anything. On the surface this reads like an empowering statement but it is steeped in solipsism. Society needs responsibilities to function. But as Morrison says, this only works if we get to freely choose what to be responsible for. This also loosely reminds me of the scene in Gerwig's Little Women (2019) in which Jo laments the seemingly dichotomous view of women as either only fit for love or smart and don't desire love.
It's simultaneously scary and exciting that Sula is one of Morrison's most accessible books. I would love to read her more challenging books but I am also worried that it will fly over my head.
I think more than anything, Sula has opened my mind to a different way of reading. There are "unrealistic" elements in an otherwise realistic story that could throw you off if you don't examine it closely. It reminds me of the lessons George Saunders mentions in his book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain that everything in the story must advance the plot in a non-trivial way. In Morrison's Sula, you have to constantly be asking yourself why the events are presented in this way or why the characters act the way they do. Otherwise, you may finish the book with a distaste for Sula the character. After all, Sula is a remarkably unrealistic and unlikable character. Why is Sula unlikable? Why does Nell appear to the reader as the "good person"? Why do we think this?
In Sula, the meaning you associate with one thing is constantly being challenged. National Suicide Day may initially sound like a badly-worded holiday to bring awareness to the importance of mental health but it is a "holiday" founded by Shadrack to release him of the burden of the surprise of death. He calls for a single day in which people can die without frightening him of its unexpectedness. By the end of the novel, several people die unexpectedly in an accident brought on by the mania of participating in the march for National Suicide Day. Fire featured twice in the novel and is related both times to love even as it ends in death: Eva burning her son to save him from himself and Eva jumping off a window in an attempt to save Hannah from burning to death. Perhaps the most jarring is Nell, who is presented as the "good" one, is revealed to have felt excited, almost relishing, at the drowning of Chicken Little. Unlikable Sula who is an independent and modern woman (characteristics that are typically touted as objectively good by modern standards) dies by the end of the book having lost a man she attempted to keep by being traditional and having lost her only friend.
Even Morrison finds Sula a deplorable character. In an interview, she has this to say about Sula as a character:
I suppose The Bluest Eye was about one’s dependence on the world for identification, self-value, feelings of worth. Whereas I wanted to explore something quite different in Sula, where you have a woman who is whimsical, who depends on her own instincts. Both exaggerations I find deplorable, but my way is to push anything out to the edge, to see of what it is really made, so that Sula would be ‘a free woman.' There’s a lot of danger in that, you know, because you don’t have commitments, and you don’t feel that connection. I think freedom, ideally, is being able to choose your responsibilities. Not not having any responsibilities, but being able to choose which things you want to be responsible for.
This feels very different from the contemporary idea of 'feminism' in which a woman does not owe anyone anything. On the surface this reads like an empowering statement but it is steeped in solipsism. Society needs responsibilities to function. But as Morrison says, this only works if we get to freely choose what to be responsible for. This also loosely reminds me of the scene in Gerwig's Little Women (2019) in which Jo laments the seemingly dichotomous view of women as either only fit for love or smart and don't desire love.
It's simultaneously scary and exciting that Sula is one of Morrison's most accessible books. I would love to read her more challenging books but I am also worried that it will fly over my head.