SULA BY TONI MORRISON - FREE STUDY GUIDE

KEY LITERARY ELEMENTS

SETTING

The real story of Sula takes place within a frame narrative. The first and last chapters take place around the year 1965. The ten chapters in the middle take place in the years between 1919 and 1940, telling Sula’s story. The setting is in an area known as "The Bottom," which is a hilly area above the valley town of Medallion, Ohio.

For the most part, black inhabitants live in The Bottom and white landowners live in the valley. There is a story behind the settlement of The Bottom, a story that has become a significant piece of local lore. In the previous century, a slave owner promised his slave freedom and a piece of rich bottomland in exchange for some difficult work. The slave did the work and got his freedom; but the slave-owner played a trick on him in regard to the land. He gave the freed slave land at the top of a hill, rather than in the rich bottomland that is good for farming. He told the slave the hill was indeed bottomland--the Bottom of heaven, closer to God. The slave felt lucky to have it, but soon learned the truth of this cruel trick. The planting was difficult, the soil washed away, and the wind blew hard. In spite of the hardship, The Bottom soon developed into a lovely town with close-knit inhabitants.

By 1965, the rich white neighbors in the valley have decided they like The Bottom better than their valley and proceed to level the small black town in order to build a golf course and fancy houses. The Blacks are forced to move into the valley.

CHARACTER LIST

Major Characters

Sula Peace
A wild and defiant girl who lives with her mother Hannah, the town slut, and her grandmother Eva, a strong-headed, onelegged matriarch. Sula has a birthmark shaped like a rose over one eye. She is headstrong and self-driven. She leaves The Bottom for ten years and returns with a worldly air of sophistication. She sleeps with her best friend’s husband and later dies alone. For the most part, she is misunderstood and mistrusted all her life.

Shadrack
A shell-shocked veteran of World War I. Shadrack lives by the river in a shack and is a fixture on the landscape of The Bottom. He often talks sensible nonsense and wanders aimlessly. He has founded his own holiday, National Suicide Day. On January 3 of every year he marches the streets of the town and invites people to commit suicide, in acknowledgment of the crazy world they all live in.

Nel Wright
Sula’s best (and only) friend. Nel lives with her mother, Helene, a proper and respectable woman who has tried to shield her daughter from anything shameful or improper. Nel is the opposite of Sula. She is a quiet girl who obeys her mother perfectly. Her family is the essence of respectability, in contrast to the crazy chaotic household of Eva Peace. For a time, Nel becomes more independent and self-driven, like Sula; but when Sula leaves, Nel returns to being conservative, traditional, and proud of her own goodness. She is heartbroken when she catches Sula in bed with her husband.

Helene Wright
Nel’s church going and socially active mother. Her own mother was a prostitute in New Orleans, so she tries very hard all her life to battle any suggestion of impropriety, shielding herself and her household from anything dirty or shameful.

Eva Peace
Sula’s grandmother. She has only one leg, and the people of the town suspect her amputation was an insurance scam in order to help her raise her small children. She lives on the second floor of her house in a makeshift wheelchair and rents out rooms to a motley assortment of people. She cares passionately for her children, to the point that she ends the life of her drug-addicted son rather than see him suffer. She also throws herself out a second story window to save her daughter, Sula’s mother, who has caught on fire.

Hannah
Sula’s mother. She likes men and she is considered to be a loose woman in The Bottom, though the women tolerate her quite well. Since she only wants love, not commitment, she offers no threat to the other women. She says once she does not like her daughter Sula, and when she catches on fire, Sula watches her burn to death without helping.

Plum
Eva's son and Hannah's brother. Plum is his mother’s favorite. When he returns from the war, he is a wreck. He lives in a room downstairs in his mother's house, and spends his time sleeping, stealing, and taking drugs. Eva cannot bear to see him suffer from his drug addiction, so she douses him with kerosene and lights him on fire.

Minor Characters

Tar Baby
One of Eva's boarders who has a beautiful voice. A white man and an alcoholic, he does odd jobs and scrounges for money for his liquor.

Chicken Little
A small boy who drowns while playing with Sula and Nel.

Jude
Nel's husband and the father of her children. He sleeps with Sula and then abandons Nel.

Ajax
A local who first notices Sula and Nel when they are about twelve years old. Years later, he has an affair with Sula, but ends it when she becomes too attached to him.

The Deweys
Three boys who are taken in by Eva. They are not related, but they resemble one another. They never seem to grow up and are a permanent fixture in The Bottom.

Sula by Toni Morrison: Free BookNotes Summary

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