Comparison of Major relationship - Essay Example

A Comparison of Major relationship in ‘Sula’ and ‘Oral History’ The major relationship in ‘Sula’ is that of Sula andher friend Nel; Nel actions influence Sula in the entire novel. Despite the disparities between the two friends, they become closely attached to one another during adolescence. In Oral history, the major relationship is that of Vashti Cantrell and Rose and Jenifer and Pricey Jane. In Oral History, Pricey Jane and Jenifer are the two major characters. Numerous aspects of the two characters link them to their specific cultural group; their native heritage. Oral Mae’s and Vashti mixed descent reveal a historical truth whose enduring implications are constantly revealed. In Sula, Sula and Nela relationship is altered by a shocking accident which changed everything. This incident occurs when the two friends witness Chicken Little death together. This occurs one day as Sula playfully swings Chicken Little around holding his hands; she loses her grip and the boy fell in the river and drowned. The two friends did not tell anyone about Chicken Little accident although it was not their intention to cause any harm to the boy. Sula and Nel drift apart after the incident. This incident is followed by Sula’s mother death after her dress catches fire and she dies of the serious burns (Morrison 74). After finishing high school, Nel decides to get married and takes up the role of a wife as well as a mother. Sula follows an outrageously different course as she chooses to live a life of total disrespect for social principles and vicious independence. Sula leaves the Bottom shortly after Nel’s wedding for duration of ten years. Sula has countless affairs, both white and black. Nonetheless, she discovers that people in other places follow the similar uninteresting routines and this makes her to go back to Nel because of their long standing friendship and also her birthplace Bottom. When she returns to the Bottom, the town considers her the very epitome of evil for her transparent disrespect for social principles. Their hatred partly accrues from the interracial associations that Sula has, this resolves itself when Sula has an affair with her best friend’s husband, Jude. This causes Jude to abandon Nel. Satirically, the community label of Sula as wicked really improves their personal lives. Sura’s presence in the Bottom offers the people the drive to live cordially with each other. Nel breaks her relationship with Sula completely, however before Sula passes away in 1940, they acquire a feeble reunion. This causes the harmony that has reigned in the Bottom to disappear quickly. This shows the influence that Sula had on Nel as well as the rest of the community. In Sura, there are confusing mysteries of relationship and human relationships and it is evident that social principles are not adequate as the basis for living. The reader is tempted to apply the entirely opposite words of ‘evil’ and ‘good’ as well as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ to Sura and her actions. Sura defies uncomplicated answers, showing the beauty, ambiguity and terror of life, in its repulsions and triumphs. In Oral History, Vashti Cantrell comes to stay with Almarine just as Lamrines wife, Pricey Jane passes away. Vashti comes in the area to find her husband’s people and this is all the information that the community learnt about Vashti’s past (Smith 86). Amongst the Cherokee, when a wife or husband dies, the survivor-widow or widower normally takes on a new mate as a close relative of the dead person. The community assumes that Vashti will eventually get married to Almarine. Hibbits, who is presently living with Amarine assisting him with the household, narrates Vashti’s arrival. Vashti appears all of a sudden at the cabin’s door one cold and rainy afternoon. She has a quiet approach and this reveals her closeness to the natural environment. This surprises Rose who argues that people did not get all the way to the cabin without her noticing that there was a guest (p.86). Vashti assumes that Rose is partly Indian because she is very tall and has thick dark shiny hair. Vashti enters the cabin and she speaks to Rose like an Indian, in a low flat voice with her face not moving at all. Her manner and stature, together with Almarine’s unhesitant failure to confirm that Rose was not his wife causes the tender hearted Rose so restless that she leaves the cabin. When Rose returns to the Cabin, Vashti has already settled and she is frying eggs and making coffee and her daughter Ora Mae is holding Dory. Almarine just sits on a chair blowing his coffee and nodding his head, watching all that Vashti is doing. Almarine asks Vashti to stay for a while because it is raining (Smith 87). Two years later, Vashti is already married to Almarine and nursing their first born son. Vashti is presented as a personification of dependent and confined female domesticity. She is the most domesticated of the Cantrell women. She comes to the valley to find a man to look after her and her daughter Ora Mae. She remains practically speechless in the entire novel as she keeps Almarine’s house. She is revealed as a mysterious and minor character. In ‘Sula’ the friendship between Sula and Nel is quite evident. When the Bottom faces the hope of the white golf course in 1965, Nel visits Eva, Sura’s grandmother, in a nursing home. Nel is accused by Eva of sharing the guilt for the little boy’s death. This accusation causes Nel to confront the injustice of her judgment against her best friend, Sula. Nel comes to terms with the fact that she had blamed Chicken Little’s death totally on Sula and set herself up as the good party in their relationship and incident. Nel realizes that after the incidence of the little boy’s death, she hastily held on to the social principles in an attempt to show the other people that she was good. After Sula’s death, she goes to the graveyard and mourns calling out her name sadly. Initially, when Nel and Sula are children their families are contrasted. Nel is a product of a household unit that holds social principles to be very important. Nel’s home is stable, although some people might regard it as inflexible or stiff. Nel is not sure of her mother unadventurous life for her. Her doubts are made firmer when she meets her grandmother, Rochelle, who is a former prostitute and the only unprincipled woman in their family line. Alternatively, Sula’s family is quite opposite of Nel’s. Sula lives with mother, Hannah, and Grandmother Eva whom are regarded as loose and eccentric. Their home also houses three boys who have been adopted informally. They also have a stable stream of borders. Despite these family and principle differences, Sula and Nela become very attached to one another, a friendship that is seen through to end. The common theme in Sula is the control of friends and family on the major characters. Sula and Nel character is shaped and continue to be molded by the experiences that they have with their families especially their mothers. Their mother relationships were consecutively shaped by their own mothers and this reveals a chain reaction that has passed through the past generations. Eva, Sula’s grandmother has tolerated lonely and desperate poverty which proves that she is a tough and strong woman. Eva is also very proud because when she is left by her man, BoyBoy, when she is young and lacks food, she considers going back to her family in Virginia. Eva struggles to keep her family away from hunger; however she only succeeds through her neighbors’ kindness. Later, she becomes the vibrant matriarch in a very busy home, which includes Hannah, Sula and the rest of the adopted children and boarders. Alternatively, Cecile, Nel’s grandmother is very stern and religious. She is Helene’s mother and also arranged her marriage to Cecile grand nephew, Wiley Wright. When her mother dies, Helene takes Nel for the funeral in New Orleans. Hannah, Eva’s Mother moves back in with her mother after her husband die when Sula is only three years old. Hannah is quite similar to her mother because she also loves maleness. She has brief and frequent affairs with the men who fancy her. She is resented by most women but they do not hate her. Men do not gossip about Hannah because she is generous and kind. They regularly defend her against their wives stern words. In Oral history, Ora Mae becomes aware of the disingenuous intents that Jennifer has towards them. Jennifer tries to be sweet as well as caring towards her family after arriving in Black Cove as she has realized that the people are so kind and sweet. However her family rejects her because they come to the realization that Jenifer is studying them for a school project being the first and only time that she has ever visited them. The last words that Ora Mae tells Jenifer is to never ever return with a tape recorder because if he sets it up, she might hear what she does not want to hear. Ora Mae warns Jennifer that she won’t be pleased with the things that she would discover in the region and she might not be ready for the utter truth. Jenifer had placed a tape recorder in the old Cantrell home, the supposed haunted home, for collecting all the information that she had required for her project. The comments that Jennifer receives about her research is evident about the bad relationship between Jenifer and Ora Mae. Ora Mae is not fond of Jenifer for coming to her region and taking the culture and people as things to be studies. Her statements reveal that strangers, who come into the area and view it without first assimilating it, cannot truly understand the people and the way of the land. It is evident that outsiders cannot view and hear things that they will not decline to believe as true because it breaks the insights that they have projected onto the region. Jenifer’s inexperienced and stereotyped point of view is not corrected even after she comes into direct contact with her mountain family. Jenifer omitted in her report the things that did not fit her expectations. When she comes across Suzy Q, her little cousin, finger nail polish, she is awed by the modernity of the sight, but she fails to include this in her report. She only reports the perspectives that fit her earlier point of view, for instance Wade singing on the front porch and the mystifying noise in the old home. The incidences that alarm Jennifer and change her primitive and rustic outlook of Appalachia are reshaped within her mind. For instance when Jenifer is leaving, she is kissed by her Uncle Al, which frightens and disgusts her. Nonetheless, by the time she arrives in college, she has already set up her mind that her uncle is just a big old bully as well as a joker. Jenifer took the stories and sights she heard in Hoot Owl Holler and formed her personal opinion about the region and the people. Like in ‘Sula’, Jenifer’s relationship with the people can be compared to that Pricey Jane. Unlike Jenifer, Pricey Jane is loved by all people because she completely assimilates herself into the new region and abandons her earlier life and accepts her new home and its duties (Smith 64). Pricey Jane turns the cabin sideways and upside down cleaning it, she dries apples on the shed roof and churns butter which is evidence that she is totally satisfied with her new life (Smith 73). She is successfully assimilated into the region unlike Jenifer. Pricey Jane is contented with her new life in the region. However she is not truly an insider because at some point she drinks dew-poisoned milk together with her son, an action which most insiders would not do. In ‘Sula’ Sula and Nel relationship bring out the significant ways in which communities and families shape children identity. Sula does not only show the manner in which children are shaped but also the manner in which a community receives a person receives a person who defies the very environment that molds them. Her actions and much of her character is a direct outcome of her childhood in the area. Her identity has many aspects of a strong as well as a self-sufficient feminist personality. Nonetheless, the people in the area don’t view Sula in a positive light. After returning to Medallion as an adult, she is viewed as evil and regarded with a lot of fear. However this does not affect her relationship with Nel. The main reason why Sula is seen as an outcast by the community is because she does uphold the social norms established in the society; she does not want to get married and also she recurrently sleeps around. Nel character serves as a point of comparing the diverse manners in which the community treats Sula. The way that Sula is treated is specifically worrying. For instance after her husband’s death, Hannah does not have any relationship with men. She only sleeps with her neighbors’ husbands and those of her friends. Though Hannah sleeps around, people in Medallion still respect her and surprisingly men do not gossip about her. The author describes her as an undeniably kind as well as a generous woman (Morrison 2013). In both ‘Sula’ and ‘Oral History’, Sura and Nel relationship is similar to that of Pricey Jane and Jennifer with the people. The four women live in a society where social principles are used to guide people as good or bad. Sura and Jennifer are hated by people because they do not act in accordance with the set norms. On the other hand Nel and Pricey Jane are accepted because they live in accordance to the set norms. Works Cited Morrison, Toni. Sura. New York:Vintage House, 2004. Print. Smith, Lee. Oral History. New York: Ballantine Books, 1996. Print. Smith, Lee. Oral History." The Iron Mountain Review. 1986, 20-24. Read More