Sula in her Society - Essay Example

When describing Sula’s hometown, the author offers the environment as one in which the local community is facing unemployment and the pain from not having work for an extended period of years. Morrison describes the community who watches Sula as being secretively pain-riddled where humor is utilized in an attempt to not have to focus on their poverty. Morrison describes a “shucking, knee-slapping, wet-eyed laughter that could even describe and explain how they came to be where they were…a nigger joke” (Morrison, 4).

This describes a community which is well-aware of their social status, however they feel virtually powerless to break free from this lifestyle and utilize humor to gain a sense of control and to cope. Sula is powerfully-different from this lifestyle belief and manages, over her lifetime, to develop quality friendships and find the positive self-identity she is searching for. In Sula’s household, the women use door-slamming and other extreme behaviors such as throwing objects as a means to gain a perception of control over a very chaotic household environment and poverty living standards.

Toni Morrison illustrates these wild behaviors in Sula’s household to describe how her upbringing taught Sula that relief from stress and unhappiness in the form of these extreme behaviors were positive methods to gain power over the boundaries caused by their gender, racial and financial statuses. Toni Morrison likely described the environment where Sula was raised as a means to highlight the sociological problems of African-American women during the novel’s time-period. Her hometown maintains many more-affluent white citizens which also impacts the view of the self which less-privileged people experienced from 1920-1960.

Morrison is clearly using Sula, and her somewhat unorthodox belief in living life to its fullest, as a representation that an individual does not