(Comments on Sula, pages 150-54)

?   Sula’s opening line: “In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood” (3).

-          Both plants “have darkness”: “black” and “night” – both thrive together but are uprooted by the white community)

Significance of Sula as a character

?   Morrison: “I always thought of Sula as quintessentially black, metaphysically black, if you will.” Two kinds of blackness:

-          “biological blackness”

-          “chosen blackness”

?   “New World black . . . extracting choice from choicelessness, responding inventively to found things. Improvisational.”

?   “Daring, disruptive, imaginative, modern, out-of-the-house, outlawed, unpolicing, uncontained and uncontainable. And dangerously female.”

?   Sula as representative of a post-World War I “modernity” that

-          is “complex, contradictory, evasive, independent, liquid”

Ø   Nel gets in touch with this after “the explosive dissolving of her fragilely held-together ball of fur” (see Sula 174, 109-110)

-          ushers in Jazz Age, which was defined by African American art and culture

-          “requires new kinds of intelligence to define oneself”

 
Sula and Shadrack

?   Demonstrate “two extreme ways of dealing with displacement”:

?   Sula: “solubility” (female): “no center,” “no ego,” no consistency (Sula 119)

?   Shadrack “fixative” (male): “a struggle to order and focus experience. . . . making a place for fear as a way of controlling it” (Sula 14)

 
Challenges of Sula

?   “requires new kinds of intelligence to define oneself”

-          What is love?

-          What is goodness?

-          What is evil?

-          What is the self?

-          What is community?

(From “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature”)

Important passages of Sula explained. Page numbers refer to the Vintage International edition, 2004. Explanations by Dr. Joseph Murphy.

1)      In that place, where they tore the nightshade and the blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Madallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood. It stood in the hills above the valley town of Medallion and spread all the way to the river. It is called the suburbs now. . . (3).

This passage is from the opening of Sula, looking from the perspective of the present-day at the final demise of Medallion’s black community, the Bottom. White suburban culture, represented by the golf course, is spreading up into this hilly area that was originally forced upon blacks because white people didn’t want to live there. Now, in language suggesting violence, “they tore” that old community from its roots. The images of “nightshade” and “blackberry” represent, respectively Sula and Nel, suggesting Sula’s “double black” pariah status and Nel’s more socially complacent, “sweet black” personality, thus introducing the novel’s central character conflict.

2)      It would be here, only here, held by this blind window high above the elm tree, that she might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, just missing the dark walls, down, down, until she met a rain scene and would know the water was near, and she would curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry her, and wash her tired flesh always. Always. Who said that? Who was it that had promised her a sleep of water always?

On her deathbed, Sula envisions death as a kind of inverse birth, where she assumes a fetal position, imagines herself floating down tunnels toward water, and recalls Shadrack’s promise of “Always,” although she can’t remember Shadrack himself. From this passage it is clear that Sula understood Shadrack’s “Always” as a promise of “a sleep of water always”—the opposite of what Shadrack intended, which was a promise of stability and permanency. The “blind window” is the window that Eva, Sula’s grandmother, jumped from when Hannah, Sula’s mother, was burning. The fact that this window is now “blind,” that is, sealed up, means that Sula can free herself from family ties and forge a new identity in the waters of death. The imagery of tunnel, water, and death foreshadows the collapse of the half-built tunnel at the end of the New River Road, where many citizens of the Bottom will also meet death after Sula dies.

3)      Leaves stirred; mud shifted; there was the smell of overripe green things. A soft ball of fur broke and scattered like dandelion spores in the breeze.

     “All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.” And the loss    pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. . . .

It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just    circles and circles of sorrow.

This is the ending of Sula, where Nel finally realizes that, somehow, she has actually been missing Sula all the years she has been blaming her for taking Jude away. The imagery of “overripe green things” recalls an earlier passage where she tried to cry for her own pain but could not. The “soft ball of fur” (also recalling an earlier passage) appears to represent the more conventional attitude and identity that prevented her from feeling for Sula; now with that “ball” exploded she can finally cry. This cry of feeling transcends conventions: indeed, the imagery of “no bottom” and “no top” suggests an exploding of the divisions between black Bottom and white Medallion.

VII. Study Questions on Sula

Study Questions: Morrison, Sula (page numbers refer to the Vintage International edition, 2004)

閱讀問題；莫里森, Sula

1. 請問巴頓區(Bottom)的鄰居有哪些特色?巴頓區(Bottom)的鄰居和俄亥俄州其他區的居民有何差異?從哪種角度看來巴頓區是所謂的 “nigger joke” (黑人的笑話)(4)?莫里森運用兩種策略去介紹巴頓區(Bottom)的居民給讀者認識：她一來說明該區的毀滅(3)，一來她描述在山谷區居民(valley man)(4)眼中的巴頓人。這些策略對美國非非裔讀者而言是如何呈現出非裔美國社區呢?在巴頓區和罐頭工廠行之間有沒有相似處呢?

2. 為什麼沙錐客創立國際自殺日呢?國際自殺日有和目的和儀式呢?人們如何回應呢?國際自殺日如何進入巴頓區的生活中?你認為莫里森為何用一章節描述沙錐客和他的戰後創傷記憶即使小說的重心是其他角色呢?

3. 從49-56頁的證據來看，妮兒和蘇拉是怎樣的相似呢?她們如何不同，她們的家庭背景如何不同?她們的關係如何被巴頓區(Bottom)的經驗所影響呢?舉例而言，包括她們得關係如何被木匠路的男子觀看和遇到愛爾蘭男孩的經驗所影響。

4. 其肯‧立特的死亡是小說的核心事件(57-66)，它導致錯綜的情節。在這件悲劇中，蘇拉和妮兒扮演什麼角色?這件事對妮兒和蘇拉的關係有何影響?船夫發現其肯‧力特的屍體如何反映當時白人對黑人的態度?沙錐客怎麼捲進該事件中呢?

5. 伊娃的大膽行為使她在小說中得到注目：她犧牲自己的腿去換保險金(30-31)，她燒死了自己最年幼的兒子普羅(47-48;71-27)，基於無望的企圖，她跳出窗外去解救漢娜(75-6)，請問這些事件如何塑造伊娃的特質?她的行為有正當理由嗎?

6. 在1923年時，有沒有前兆暗示漢娜將被火燒死？這些前兆如何揭開伊娃的文化背景?你認為莫里森為何將伊娃解釋自己殺死幼兒的理由包括在小說內呢? 伊娃發現蘇拉在漢娜燒死時有一些 “行為”，而這些行為如何解釋蘇拉的特質?

7. 為什麼裘德和妮兒結婚?他們的婚姻如何用來解釋當時瑪德琳鎮普遍流行對種族和性別的態度?解釋這句的意思：“Nel’s response to Jude’s shame and anger selected her away from Sula” (84). 蘇拉一開始對妮兒的婚姻抱持何種態度?

8. 在「1939年」時，蘇拉如何被視為巴頓的一種邪惡勢力？有哪些關於她邪惡的證據？鄰居看待蘇拉為邪惡的態度如何說明當地人對邪惡的定義？蘇拉對社區的威脅如何成為一種正向的影響？敘述者如何理性的評斷蘇拉的特殊之處？解釋以下關於蘇拉的評論：“. . . like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous” (121).

9. 在1940年時，蘇拉如何證明自己的生活選擇無誤和批評妮兒的選擇？蘇拉如何平反自己和妮兒的丈夫發生關係的選擇？你覺得她的說法有說服力嗎?她對阿傑(124-37)具占有慾的關係和她對其他男人的態度是否不一致？在小說的尾聲中，什麼是妮兒對蘇拉最後的認知和情感呢(174)?

10. 在「1941年」時，蘇拉的死亡對巴頓區有何影響?結冰有何特殊含意? 國際自殺日今年為何不同？它如何轉變為示威更甚至成為一場災難？在「1965年」時，瑪德琳鎮(Medallion)如何改變？諷刺的說，巴頓(Bottom)變得怎樣？對黑人而言，什麼事變好、什麼事變糟？敘述者說得這個句子有何含意： “the Bottom had been a real place” (166)?

11. 誰是杜威(deweys)和黑寶貝？她們可以被如何連結至小說中身分及語言的議題(37-41)？杜威在下列上下文中有何特殊意義：妮兒的婚姻(84)，蘇拉的疾病(141)，洞穴意外(158-62)，和1965年的瑪德琳鎮(Medallion)(163)?

12. 當其肯‧立特淹死後，沙錐客對蘇拉說的 “always”(永遠)有何含意(156-58)？什麼是妮兒後來對其肯‧立特事件自我角色的認知(169-70)？
 

VIII. Further Reading

1.          Anniinas’ Toni Morrison Page: A comprehensive web site for all of Toni Morrison's books (Paradise, Beloved) as well as biographies, interviews, and web resources. Link: <http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/toni.htm>

2.          “A Conversation with Toni Morrison”. Pam Houston interviews Morrison for The Oprah Magazine. Link: <http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/Toni-Morrison-on-Writing#ixzz1T2E0Nkao>

3.          “Toni Morrison’s Challenge”. An interview with Toni Morrison on her relatively new attempt at writing children’s literature. Link: <http://sparkaction.org/node/487>

4.          “The Project on the History of Black Writing”. Contains a bibliography of black writing from 1400-1980. Link: <http://www2.ku.edu/~phbw/>

5.          On Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Includes many articles that have been written on the novel, as well as excerpts. <http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/bluest.htm>

6.          The Nobel Prize for Literature 1993: Toni Morrison featured as Nobel laureate. Link: <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/index.html>