Sula: More Discussion Questions

1. Discuss how in Sula, the female dichotomy manifests itself in the story through sexual identity: Sula is as sexually active as her promiscuous mother had been, while Nel remains in a monogamous marriage.
   
   

2. Why does Sula commit adultery with Jude? Does Nel over-react? The symbolism of his name. The tie on the door as a symbol. Nel’s private hell.
   
   

3. Why does Ajax leave?
   
   

4. Death is by far the dominant theme in Sula. The text begins, "There was once a neighborhood," signifying that the community no longer exists (3). Additionally, the deaths of Cecile Sabat, Plum Peace, Chicken Little, Hannah Peace, and Sula Peace play important roles in the text. Finally, the conclusion features mass death on National Suicide Day, a day instituted by Shadrack to contain death. Morrison portrays death as an event that purifies, renews, and brings freedom to the deceased and/or their family and friends. Death is also an event that is often witnessed in the text; it is a spectacle that demands attention. Consider how this notion of death subverts more traditional depictions and why Morrison uses this strategy.
   
   

5. Time and History: Each chapter is titled with a date, progressing chronologically from 1919 through 1965. Yet, the events in the chapters do not correspond with the dates of the chapters. (Chapter 1919, for example, details the first National Suicide Day, an event that took place in 1920.) Additionally, the characters focus on seasons and natural occurrences instead of dates. This pattern disrupts a linear notion of history and replaces it with a circular history in which past and present are dynamically interrelated. The novel begins with an introduction to the Bottom, followed by the story of Shadrack, detailing his experience in World War I. While discussions of the war are not a focal point of the text, they are integral to the plot (for example, Plum's horrible war experience led to the debauchery that precipitates his murder by Eva, and Shadrack's WWI experience spawns the creation of National Suicide Day). Morrison highlights history to show how it affects the future and how the past is not always separable from the present.
   
   

6. Sexuality: Differences between Sula and Nel's sexuality are clearly marked: Nel represents socially acceptable female sexuality, while Sula symbolizes the unacceptably independent, promiscuous, unmarried woman. In addition to this obvious motif, critics such as Kathryn Bond Stockton have made strong arguments for a lesbian reading of the text (see Works Consulted). To support such a reading, pay specific attention to the language in the scene where the girls play together in the grass (58) and when they talk of their past while Sula is on her deathbed (144).
   
   

7. Language and Meaning: The French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed that language is an arbitrary system of signification, in other words, that there is no causal or logical connection between the form of a word and that which it represents. Jacques Derrida who argued that language and meaning are arbitrary constructs of systems of authority later elaborated this theory. In Sula, Morrison builds upon these notions and demonstrates that language is infused with power, a power that marks people's systems of thought. A primary example of this is "the Bottom," a name signifying not the geographical bottom of the valley, but, instead, the bottom of the social scale. Think about other ways in which Morrison questions labels and names (consider, for example, the Dewey’s). The main character, Sula, is "marked" in numerous ways, including the arrival of the birds that accompany her return to the Bottom, by the names and labels the townspeople give her, and, literally, by her birthmark. Notice how different characters "read" Sula differently by reading her birthmark variously as a rose (52, 96, 138), a frightening ambiguous object (97), a copperhead (103), a rattlesnake (104), and a tadpole (156). The actual appearance of the birthmark is left ambiguous. How is this significant? What do various characters' readings of the birthmark indicate about them and about their relationship to Sula (114)?
   
   

8. Absence/Presence: Another dichotomy Morrison dissolves is that of absence and presence. The most obvious example of the interplay between the two is the title itself, which foregrounds a character that is absent throughout much of the text and dies well before the story's conclusion. Further, many other important characters are absent from the text at pivotal moments, including white people, all the significant male characters, and members of past generations. Yet, absence is not equated with emptiness. Sula, for example, describes Ajax's absence as "everywhere, stinging everything" (134-135). Absences are not silent; they speak.
   
   

9. Mirror Scenes: Moments of recognition (mirror scenes) occur throughout the novel. During these points, the characters often come to "realize" their selfhood by looking at themselves or at another character. Throughout their childhoods, Sula and Nel serve as "mirrors" for one another. Nel also has an independent "mirror scene" when she looks at the mirror in her bedroom and declares, "I'm me." These scenes can be read as literary devices and/or can be examined in light of psychoanalysis.
   
   

10. Containment: Containment plays a vital role in various forms throughout the novel. Many times, containment is a comforting act that helps characters attain a sense of control and peace. This can be seen in the ways in which Sula uses the boarded up window in Eva's bedroom as a soothing influence. The desire to contain and control an unpredictable life is something that overwhelms Shadrack, Sula, and others, and it is how each handles their attempts to exert control that not only distinguishes them from one another, but also inextricably links them in their respective fates.