Social Values In Morrison's SulaBy Toni Morrison

In the novel Sula, by Toni Morrison we follow the life of Sula Peace through out her childhood in the twenties until her death in 1941. The novel surrounds the black community in Medallion, specifically "the bottom". By reading the story of Sula’s life, and the life of the community in the bottom, Morrison shows us the important ways in which families and communities can shape a child’s identity. Sula not only portrays the way children are shaped, but also the way that a community receives an adult who challenges the very environment that molded them. Sula’s actions and much of her personality is a direct result of her childhood in the bottom. Sula’s identity contains many elements of a strong, independent feminist

In Toni Morrison’s Sula, gender heteronormative relationships are demonstrated in a very punishable manner. The two main characters Sula Peace, and Nel Right share a very strong, well connected friendship. The two of them are a mirror reflection of each other, with the same desires. Heteronormative institutions in the book do not seem to be stable for the most part. Hannah Peace, the single mother Sula, lives a disordered life in her household while Helene Wright belongs to a conservative and peaceful life, but her husband is never around. With the two daughters of both families being part of each other’s lives, they create a friendship that shows the privilege for female-female bonds over male-male bonds.

Rebelling against the societal norms can get you killed, or at least have death wished upon you. That’s why people tend to follow the status quo, they are least likely to a ripple in a stagnant pond. However, there are those who don’t mind making a large splash, no matter the consequences to others. Sula, from Toni Morrison’s novel, Sula, created waves after she returned to Bottom and fought against every expectation that was placed upon as Black woman.

In her book Sula, Toni Morrison creates a parallel between good and evil through her use of symbolism and syntax. Coinciding with her abundance of symbolism, she often times uses birds to allow her readers to know when evil is present within her novel. Usually associated with happiness and rebirth, Morrison instead chooses to details birds as portents of death or wickedness within the Bottom. This parallel between the freedom and joy of a bird and the haunting imminence of death ultimately diminishes the severity of each calamity.

Toni Morrison's novel, Sula, places women chiefly at the forefront, examining the matriarchies of the Bottom, and the relationship the novel’s female protagonists. Despite Morrison’s focus on women, men play just as important of a role within the text, as their various actions greatly impact the central females within the novel. All of the men who live in the Bottom impact the women of the novel in similar ways due to their struggles with their masculinity. Morrison’s text characterizes manhood and masculinity as a cycle commencing with men’s fleeting desire to elevate their status, either through marriage or employment, and ending the cycle with their tendency to abandon these desires once they are achieved or deemed out of reach.

At the climax of her book Beloved, Toni Morrison uses strong imagery to examine the mind of a woman who is thinking of killing her own children. She writes,

Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, can be briefly summarized as a story with woman who is living in both the horrible aftermath of slavery, as well as her action of murdering her baby child in an attempt to save her from slavery. This story is based on the true story of Margaret Garner, who killed her own child and attempted to kill her other children instead of willfully letting them all return to lives of slavery. While slavery is today clearly classified as wrong by the vast majority of civilized society, as is infanticide, the event that takes place in this book is not as black and white. These instances of a grayer side of morality represent a sort of moral ambiguity that runs rampant throughout the entire novel. The example that is of paramount importance is when Sethe, the protagonist of the story, murders her child in order to save the child from a life of slavery. While at first glance, this act may seem wrong to modern readers, there is actually some evidence that, when thought about, justifies Sethe’s actions.

The language, the imagery, the themes, the characters, everything in Toni Morrison's Sula, touches my heart. I want these people to win, to know goodness in their lives, to stop being small. I want the loud and long cry of rage which has no bottom or top with "circles and circles of sorrow" to end (Sula 174).  Morrison embraces the political aspects of her work without apology and freely admits to desiring to emote a reader response. She maintains, "the best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time" ("Rootedness" 345). Without question, Morrison is able to do both. In her analogy, comparing our place as readers of her writing to that of the congregation

Your skin begins to wrinkle. Your hair turns gray. You become frail, thin and weak. All of these transformations inevitably occur in everyone’s body over time. But what remains the same in a person after all these years? Toni Morrison, in her novel Sula, suggests that our inner selves do not change as much as we think. Through a consistent emphasis on body parts, color, and physical appearance, Morrison illustrates the coexistence of change and stability that lie within each person’s body and identity. Though it appears that people can easily alter their identities to fit their desires, Morrison ultimately emphasizes that one’s identity does not change over time because one’s body prevents it from doing so.

Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize winning book Beloved, is a historical novel that serves as a memorial for those who died during the perils of slavery. The novel serves as a voice that speaks for the silenced reality of slavery for both men and women. Morrison in this novel gives a voice to those who were denied one, in particular African American women. It is a novel that rediscovers the African American experience. The novel undermines the conventional idea of a story’s time scheme. Instead, Morrison combines the past and the present together. The book is set up as a circling of memories of the past, which continuously reoccur in the book. The past is embedded in the present, and the present has no

“We’ve all got both light and dark inside of us. What matters is the part we choose to act on (Sirius Black) ”. Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved dedicates her novel to the 60 million and more exposed to the darkness within the people set out to hurt them. The novel depicts how cruelty leads ex-slaves to make irrational decisions and shape the people they are at the end . The cruelty inflicted on one including but not limited to slavery causes a chain reaction of hatred, pain and suffering and the cycle continues to repeat itself as seen in the novel with Schoolteacher, Sethe and Paul D. Furthermore, Morrison associates symbols with specific characters to depict personal struggles and develop the overarching theme, cruelty. Schoolteacher’s acceptance and use of cruel acts upon Sethe and Paul D reveals his immorality and in doing so dehumanizes himself, as well them. Overall, cruel acts inflicted on one negatively impacts the characters and leads them to commit inhumane acts themselves.

During the 20th century, there were many changes regarding African Americans. Public racial discrimination became illegal in the mid 1900s, thanks to many civil rights activists. There were also many authors and poets that wrote about African American culture or discrimination, such as Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. One very important author before this time, through it, and long after is Toni Morrison.

“First and most important, [the Moynihan Report] is fast becoming the scriptural basis for several new brands of bigotry, even without the consent of its authors” (Farmer). Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, also known as the Moynihan Report, caused much controversy in the 1960s due to the blame Moynihan placed on the black community for their own inequality. Although Moynihan attempts to accurately study the inequality between white and black households and the reasons behind this disparity, he, whether intentionally or unintentionally, perpetuates systemic oppression against the black community by giving the white community an opportunity to blame black poverty on the black people rather than owning up to their own role in this situation. Meanwhile, the society Toni Morrison sets up in Beloved disputes the issues expressed in the Moynihan report, especially Moynihan’s claim that blacks cannot be economically equal to whites due to the high rates of both illegitimate births and households headed by females in the black community. Toni Morrison’s Beloved proves it is not as easy for blacks to pull themselves out of their situations as many whites during this time period may think by... (be more specific?)

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a captivating depiction of history. Morrison transfigures history into a powerful yet delicate story. Through the protagonist, Sethe, Morrison tells the story of Margaret Garner who, in 1856, escaped slavery in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio. Sethe, like Margaret, escaped slavery and found her safe haven in Ohio. Sethe now lives with her eighteen year old daughter Denver and is haunted by many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where many terrible things happened. Sethe is also haunted in another way, by the ghost of her unnamed baby whose grave stone reads one word, “Beloved”. Sethe is faced with many physical obstacles in this novel, but when a young woman who goes by the name of Beloved shows up at her door Sethe is also challenged mentally and emotionally.

Morrison’s stories tended to place a special importance on African-American culture. It was one of the facets of her stories that remained constant throughout all her writings. While the setting and time of her stories vary, it seems as though Black culture never truly changes in them. This shows importance, lasting value, and the ability of culture to be passed down. Oftentimes, African-American culture serves as a guiding point in a seemingly morally lopsided world. However, though cultural traditions are passed down through the generations, cultural flaws are also inherited. One pattern of flaws in African-American culture that Morrison acknowledges is shown in the propensity to overvalue material goods and undervalue nature, while falling for systems that abuse them. For instance, in Tar Baby,