novels are famous for giving voice to black political, social, and moral consciousness. His novels primarily deal with questions and concerns related to black heritage and futures, and all the triumphs and tragedies of power and identity in between. Morrison uses the very processes of writing and characterization as a tool for negotiating power and identity in her novel Sula. His racial and political explorations can be effectively deepened and complicated for the reader by viewing his language as a tool for black agency. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay "Before [Shadrack], on a tray there was a large tin plate divided into three triangles. In one triangle there was rice, in another meat, and in the third compote tomatoes... Shadrack looked at the soft colors that filled these triangles: the lumpy whiteness of the rice, the quivering blood tomatoes, the grayish-brown meat a balance that soothed him, transferred some of his balance to him. white, red and brown would stay where they were – would not explode or escape from their restricted areas – he suddenly felt hungry and looked around for his hands” (p. 8). The divided meal that Morrison describes here captures the simple conceptions of race and race relations in the United States that have long existed in place of any deep understanding. On Shadrack's plate, browns, whites, and reds (or, roughly, African-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, and Native Americans) exist in perfect balance when separated and contained without the opportunity to interact. This balance gives Shadrack a certain comfort, but this balance should not be interpreted as support for segregation. Shadrack is a sick and mentally confused man and it is only because of his weakness that the balance is soothing. Morrison makes explicit the image of each of these separate triangles as being relatively undesirable because they exist alone: ​​“All their loathsomeness was contained in the careful balance of the triangles. » On its own, each triangle is an incomplete and “repugnant” meal. Separated, they are no less miserable to eat, but their balance gives Shadrack a false impression of their edibility. Viewing triangles as a separation of races, such containment provides nothing other than a falsely copacetic sense of race relations. Food may be separated by barriers, but they will all interact once inside Shadrack. Likewise, while there are racial barriers in the United States, there is never a shortage of interactions. Containments and barriers attempt to define a sense of belonging to an appropriate place. Racial tensions and conventions as they have been defined in the United States, however, cannot be contained by physical barriers. This pervasiveness of racial conventions has a major influence on Morrison's creations in this novel. With these false barriers, a sense of belonging is created for Sula's characters in a place called the Bottom. The Bottom's very founding as a black town was the result of interaction with whites who promised that Bottom, ironically located on top of a hill, is ideal because it is "the bottom of the sky - the best land there is” (p. 5). The Bottom turns out to be a largely worthless area of ​​land and the decay and lack of value of the city is constant throughout the novel, with the novel opening and ending with the destruction and end of the city . Stylistically, open thenovel about this sense of decadence helps set the tone of loss in the novel that resonates most devastatingly when Shadrack's promise of permanence --- that is, his comment to Sula, "Always" -- -- is long forgotten and unrealized. . Morrison denies the permanence of the city in order to deny the permanence of the feeling of belonging. Home is defined by people and emotions, not space. For black at the Bottom, even when they get to the top (in the sense that they are above white in terms of location), they are still at the "bottom". Living high up in a place called the Bottom offers a confusing sense of belonging in the world. Such confusion of locations fuels racial tensions in the United States and tensions between Sula's characters. Part of Sula's misery lies in her loss of a sense of belonging. She disappears for ten years, finding no home in any town and returning to the Bottom, not because it was her home, but because it was the last of her options. Hélène Wright, Nel Wright's mother, also characterizes this confused sense of belonging. Her confusion lies not in where she calls her physical home, but rather in where she calls her societal location. After receiving harsh words and treatment from a white train conductor, "Like a street puppy wagging its tail to the doorpost of the butcher's shop from which it was kicked out moments before", Helene smiled. Smiled dazzlingly and flirtatiously at the salmon-colored face of the conductor” (p. 21). Helen smiles out of a sense of submission, trying to appeal to the white conductor for approval, almost as an excuse for her being a black woman. The simile Morrison uses is particularly effective because comparing Helen's actions to those of a puppy highlights the response as automatic and even stupid, a symbol of her internalization of submission. His very appropriate style and mannerisms also act as an apology for her. Creole heritage, free to be black of which she is ashamed. This confusion of place in society does not go unnoticed by those in a position to give her a place - the two black soldiers who saw her smiling submissively on the battlefield. the train "looked hit" (p. 21) and the people of Medallion actually changed her name to Helen in their pronunciation (p. 18). Changing Helen to Helen makes Helen more ordinary and gives her a sense of place, allowing her to belong. to these people. This concern with the name Helen is only part of the emphasis on the constructions, meanings, and origins of names as a major tool of commentary in Sula. Names have long held mythological importance in societies because they reflect and affect the destiny and personality of those given to them. them. The names of African Americans are all the more important because of the roots of slavery which often denied slaves the freedom to take and give names at their own discretion. Slaves' surnames were typically taken from their master's surname, negating any sense of true lineage or shared family identity. Additionally, slaves were typically given Christian names, virtually erasing African naming traditions and rituals that gave newborns special meaning for the rest of their lives. As a testament to the pervasive racism that influenced the institution of slavery, slaves were sometimes given names that would otherwise be reserved only for farm animals, such as Jumper or Milky. This story of denial and perversion of names is important to understandthe naming tool in Sula. The book uses names as an act of resistance to restore to black individuals the destiny and personhood bestowed upon them by the naming tradition. Interestingly, Morrison also uses names as a tool to represent racial conventions, as well as their characterization and commentary. The importance of names is evident in the very title of the novel. Sula is a pivotal character, and much of the book's content is structured around her, but it would be impossible to say that there aren't other characters as central to the book as Sula. Entire sections and chapters are devoted to the lives of Shadrack, Eva, Hannah, Helene and especially Nel. Although the novel is written in the voice of a third-person omniscient narrator, it shifts to Shadrack's perception of reality (while remaining in the third person) in its main section (p. 11) and it passes notably in the first person. narration of the interior dialogue during the scene in which Nel surprises Jude and Sula. The fluidity of narrative voices and perception is a narrative method that appeared in Western literature before Morrison, but its use in Sula works specifically to reflect the communal nature of narrative that is common to the African American aesthetic of call and of the response, in which the speaker invites the listeners to become active listeners and therefore also speakers. With such a variable focus on characters, why then is the novel only named after Sula? I argue that the title is such not because it suggests that the character Sula is the most important, but that the title is Sula because of the meaning of the name. “Sula” is a North African name meaning “peace”. Essentially, Sula's name Peace means "Peace, Peace" and the repetition emphasizes the importance of the meaning, functioning as a kind of chant that tombstones of the same name read about Nel (p. 171). The character of Sula, upon her return as an adult to the Bottom, is slandered as a devil. According to the townspeople, "...in their secret knowledge of Him, He was not the God of three faces that they sang of. They knew very well that He had four, and the fourth explained Sula" (p. 118). The town considered Sula immoral, without a purpose or place. She was an outcast in the town because nothing mattered to her and therefore she posed a dangerous threat to all relationships and institutions. But in their inability to understand it and in their fear (and even in their hatred towards it), the inhabitants of the town of Sula have managed to define themselves. They sought to live in opposition to it in every way possible, and in doing so they became more moral, kinder, and more considerate. Sula's threat gave people a sense of morality and commitment to their relationships and their city. This brought them peace, as its name and title suggest. Nel Wright, Sula's best friend, also has a name that Morrison is full of suggestions for. Sula and Nel can be read as two halves of one person. Eva's comment to Nel during Nel's visit to Eva's nursing home suggests that the two are inseparable: "You. Sula. What's the difference?" (p. 168). Nel's last name may then suggest that she was the "good" half of the one person that Sula and Nel were - that she was the moral and reasonable half. But to accept this is to accept the demonization of Sula as an immoral and unreasonable half. Rather, Sula functions to transcend the limited conceptions of “right” that the townspeople and white Christian society have created for black women. Nel is therefore “right” in the sense that she is the black femaleas the locker allows it to be, not necessarily as it should be. “Now Nel belonged to the city and all its ways” (p. 120). Sula is dramatized as a tragic heroine because she has not found a way to transcend her role, but that does not mean that transcending the limited societal role of the black woman is not the ideal. It is at the end of the novel that Nel recognizes her sense of loss as grief over losing Sula, not Jude or the life Nel had with him. It is with this recognition that she can finally mourn her true loss and express her true grief. Giving voice to black womanhood is essential in Sula and it is here that Nel's last name takes on its other profound suggestion, "to write." In a twisted piece of comedy and surrealism, Morrison creates the three Deweys – three young black men taken in by Eva, Sula's grandmother, and all named Dewey by her. The Deweys become a trinity, three people identifying as one, and in this sense their shared name confers a feeling of family. But common identity limits them, for the Deweys never grow up to become individuals, and indeed Morrison denies them even growth in height and spirit: "They had been forty-eight inches tall for years now, and even though their size was unusual, it wasn't. never seen before. The awareness was based on the fact that they remained boys in mind” (p. 84). Deprived of individuality from the beginning, the Deweys never developed it on their own because they were mentally crippled by their name association. With the Deweys, Morrison reconfirms the sense of shared identity that is important to names, as well as the destiny and personality that are determined by names. Because the Deweys share a name, they share the only thing that has the power to differentiate them, and so they lack a difference. Morrison thus underlines the importance of the name. and individuality through this trio of one. Although his appearance is brief, Chicken Little plays an important role in defining Sula and Nel's lives and personalities. Sula's accidental killing of Chicken Little and Nel's silence about it are major factors in their development as sentients. , moral figures. The name Chicken Little recalls the demeaning barn animal names given to black people from the institution of slavery. Morrison allows Chicken Little to be shamed with such a name in order to represent the continued presence of racist ideologies that are so pervasive. that they were in fact internalized by black people themselves, who are the ones who gave this little boy his name. The name evokes much more than a history of slavery. It's a name designed around the stereotypical racial convention of the pickaninny, a young black man described as prim, dirty, ignorant, and ultimately replaceable. Beginning around the time of slavery and throughout the early 20th century, popular American songs and literature included depictions of dirty pickaninnies, always in the woods, in the fields, by rivers, or in any other similar place (in order to represent them as primitive beings). and resembling an animal), be killed or otherwise injured or insulted. Chicken Little's death adheres to the convention of the pickaninny as dirty (he picks his nose throughout the scene), animalistic (his death is a drowning), and inconsequential (the disposable boy is picked up by a white man who has no consideration). for his body, and the truth about his death is kept silent). Morrison recreates the cruel convention of the pickaninny only to destroy it. The characters in the story may not pay much attention to his death, but the narrator treats the scene with a level of horror in order to convey to the reader the importance of the.