Sula

Sula Plot Summary

Introduction

In the tapestry of American literature, few works have captured the complexities of African American community life with such nuanced precision as this profound exploration of friendship, identity, and social transformation. Set against the backdrop of an Ohio town called the Bottom from the early to mid-twentieth century, the narrative offers readers a penetrating window into the evolving landscape of Black American experience during a period of monumental social change. Through the intertwined lives of two women whose paths converge and diverge across decades, we witness how individual choices and social forces shape both personal destinies and community trajectories. The story illuminates several critical historical dimensions often overlooked in mainstream accounts: the development of all-Black communities in the aftermath of slavery and their complex internal social structures; the impact of both World Wars on African American consciousness and mobility; and the tension between individualism and community expectations within marginalized groups. These themes unfold against richly textured portraits of daily life, making visible the unspoken codes and rituals that governed Black communal existence. This compelling narrative invites readers interested in social history, gender dynamics, and American cultural development to reconsider conventional understandings of conformity, rebellion, and the often painful evolution of African American communities navigating the constraints of a racially divided society.

Chapter 1: Bottom's Genesis: Racial Identity in Early 20th Century America

The Bottom emerged from bitter irony and racial deception. In the early 1900s, this Black community occupied the hillsides above Medallion, Ohio—not the fertile valley land, but the steep, difficult terrain. The community's very name stemmed from a white farmer's cruel joke on a freed slave, convincing him that the hilly, difficult land was "the bottom of heaven" and therefore desirable. This foundational myth established the social geography that would define racial relations for generations: white residents claiming the valuable valley floor while Black families struggled on the less hospitable heights, able to physically look down on white prosperity but barred from accessing it. Within this segregated geography, the Bottom developed distinct institutions and social structures. The novel portrays the church as the cornerstone of community life, supplemented by informal gathering places like Irene's Palace of Cosmetology and the Time and a Half Pool Hall. Through characters like Eva Peace, we witness the ingenuity and resilience required for survival—Eva sacrificing her own leg, possibly for insurance money, to support her three children after being abandoned by her husband. Such extreme measures reveal the economic precariousness that characterized Black life during this era, when dignified employment opportunities remained severely limited. The unique temporal rhythm of the Bottom reflected both its isolation and its cultural resilience. National Suicide Day, a bizarre ritual instituted by the shell-shocked veteran Shadrack, becomes paradoxically integrated into the community's calendar, demonstrating how even madness could be normalized and accommodated within the community's understanding. Meanwhile, women like Hannah Peace express sexual freedom in ways that challenge conventional morality but follow their own internal logic of pleasure and pragmatism. These distinctive social patterns evolved in response to exclusion from mainstream America, creating spaces where alternative values could flourish. Perhaps most significantly, this period established the paradoxical relationship between community solidarity and individual expression that would define the Bottom throughout its existence. Residents simultaneously depended upon collective support networks and maintained strict judgments about proper behavior. The community's ability to absorb eccentricity had clear limits, especially for women who transgressed sexual or maternal norms. This tension between autonomy and belonging would become increasingly pronounced as external pressures and internal conflicts shaped the community's development in subsequent decades, creating the backdrop against which the central friendship between two very different girls would unfold.

Chapter 2: Nel and Sula: Female Friendship Amid Social Constraints (1919-1927)

The formative years between 1919 and 1927 introduced the unlikely but profound friendship between Nel Wright and Sula Peace, two girls whose contrasting family backgrounds reflected different adaptations to life in the Bottom. Nel came from a rigidly respectable household headed by Helene Wright, a woman determined to distance herself from her own origins as the daughter of a New Orleans prostitute. Helene's obsession with propriety—expressed through immaculate housekeeping and strict behavioral codes—represented one survival strategy for Black women: conformity to white middle-class values as a shield against racism. Sula, conversely, grew up in Eva Peace's chaotic, crowded household, where conventional morality held little sway. Her mother Hannah's casual approach to sexuality and Eva's fierce independence offered Sula an alternative model of Black womanhood unconstrained by respectability politics. The girls' friendship blossomed against this backdrop of contrasting domestic spheres. Despite their differences, they recognized in each other qualities they themselves lacked—Nel finding in Sula a liberating spontaneity, Sula discovering in Nel a grounding stability. Their bond intensified through shared experiences, including the traumatic accidental drowning of a neighborhood boy named Chicken Little, which they witnessed but never reported. This secret became a silent foundation of their connection, representing their entry into a morally complex adult world where actions carried unintended consequences and guilt could be collectively borne. The external world increasingly impinged on their private universe as they approached adolescence. Their walks past the poolroom where men called out "pig meat" introduced them to the reality of sexual objectification, while their developing awareness of limited future prospects reflected the economic constraints facing Black women in pre-Depression America. Yet within these confines, their friendship provided a space for authentic self-expression, where neither had to perform the careful self-monitoring required in the wider community. "They had been girls together," Morrison writes, capturing how their relationship transcended conventional social boundaries. By 1927, however, their paths began to diverge. Nel's marriage to Jude Greene represented her acceptance of conventional female destiny, while Sula's departure for college signaled her rejection of the Bottom's limitations. This divergence revealed how differently each had internalized their community's expectations, despite their shared girlhood experiences. Nel embraced the role of wife and prospective mother as the fulfillment of feminine identity, while Sula sought education and experience beyond the Bottom's boundaries. Their separation marked the end of childhood intimacy and foreshadowed the more profound estrangement to come, when their adult choices would test not only their friendship but the community's tolerance for female self-determination.

Chapter 3: Challenging Conventions: Sula's Return and Community Response (1937-1940)

Sula's return to the Bottom in 1937 catalyzed a profound communal reckoning with questions of conformity, morality, and female autonomy. After ten years away in various cities, she returned as a distinctly cosmopolitan figure—educated, well-dressed, and indifferent to local social codes. Her first controversial act was institutionalizing her grandmother Eva, a decision that violated deep-seated community values about familial responsibility and respect for elders. This transgression signaled that Sula would not be bound by traditional obligations, establishing her as a dangerous threat to the social order even before her sexual behavior became apparent. The relationship between Sula and the community quickly deteriorated into mutual antagonism. When she began taking men as casual lovers—including the husbands of other women—without commitment or remorse, she violated the unspoken rules governing female sexuality. Most unforgivably, she slept with Nel's husband Jude, who subsequently abandoned his family. This betrayal shattered not only Nel's marriage but the women's lifelong friendship. The community's outrage culminated in the accusation that Sula had slept with white men, the ultimate taboo that positioned her completely outside acceptable blackness. As Morrison writes, "They said that Sula slept with white men. It may not have been true, but it certainly could have been. She was obviously capable of it." Paradoxically, Sula's pariah status strengthened communal bonds among those who defined themselves against her perceived immorality. People began treating their spouses better, caring more attentively for children and elders, and generally reinforcing community values precisely to distinguish themselves from Sula's individualistic approach to life. Morrison observes, "Their conviction of Sula's evil changed them in accountable yet mysterious ways... they had leave to protect and love one another." This phenomenon revealed how communities sometimes require an outsider to cement their own sense of identity and righteousness. The philosophical clash between Sula and the Bottom centered on fundamentally different conceptions of female autonomy and responsibility. When Nel confronted Sula about betraying their friendship, Sula responded, "I didn't kill him, I just fucked him," revealing her belief that sex carried no inherent moral obligations. Sula's insistence that she "wanted to make herself" rather than "make somebody else" through motherhood represented a radical rejection of conventional female purpose. Her death in 1940, alone and unattended except for Nel's brief visit, symbolized the ultimate price of her defiance. Yet even as the community celebrated her passing, her influence had permanently altered their self-understanding, forcing them to articulate values they had previously taken for granted and revealing the fragility of social conventions when confronted with determined individualism.

Chapter 4: Tragedy and Aftermath: National Suicide Day and the Tunnel Collapse

The winter of 1940-41 brought unprecedented hardship to the Bottom, creating conditions for catastrophe. Following Sula's death, the community experienced what seemed like divine retribution—brutal ice storms, widespread illness, and economic deprivation. Yet paradoxically, rumors spread about new employment opportunities at the river tunnel construction project that had been promised to Black workers for years. The community's rising expectations collided with their physical and spiritual exhaustion, creating a volatile atmosphere of both hope and desperation. Morrison masterfully depicts this period as one where "aberrations were as much a part of nature as grace," suggesting how the community had normalized suffering while never abandoning dreams of better circumstances. On January 3, 1941—National Suicide Day—the community's precarious equilibrium shattered. Shadrack, the shell-shocked veteran who had instituted this annual ritual decades earlier, made his customary procession through town. But instead of hiding indoors as usual, residents spontaneously joined his march in what became a carnival-like procession. This unprecedented response reflected their psychological breaking point: "It was as though the season had exhausted itself," Morrison writes, describing how the unexpected sunshine after weeks of bitter cold triggered an almost manic release of long-suppressed emotion and frustration. The impromptu parade gained momentum as it moved through town, eventually reaching the tunnel construction site that symbolized both economic promise and racial exclusion. In a frenzy of accumulated rage, participants stormed the site, destroying equipment and materials for the project from which they had been excluded. As they ventured deeper into the partially constructed tunnel, disaster struck—a collapse trapped dozens inside, resulting in numerous deaths including many of the novel's secondary characters. The Bottom literally consumed its own people in an apocalyptic moment that expressed decades of thwarted hopes and systematic exclusion from America's prosperity. This catastrophe represented both a communal self-destruction and an indictment of structural racism. The tunnel project embodied the Bottom's economic marginalization—the jobs had been repeatedly promised to Black workers but consistently given to white immigrants and "hillbillies" instead. The community's fatal invasion of the site thus constituted a desperate claim on what should have rightfully been theirs. Morrison writes that they were driven by "their need to kill it all, all of it, to wipe from the face of the earth the work of the thin-armed Virginia boys, the bull-necked Greeks and the knife-faced men who waved the leaf-dead promise." This language frames the tragedy as both suicide and protest, a final devastating rejection of a system that had denied them dignity and opportunity. The aftermath permanently altered the Bottom's trajectory. The community never recovered its former cohesion, accelerating its eventual dissolution. Those who survived faced grief compounded by the knowledge that their collective action had contributed to their neighbors' deaths. The tunnel collapse thus marked the beginning of the end for the Bottom as a distinct cultural space, presaging larger forces of urban renewal and integration that would further transform Black geographic and social reality in the decades to come.

Chapter 5: Remembrance and Reconciliation: Nel's Journey in the 1960s

By 1965, the physical and social landscape of the Bottom had undergone dramatic transformation. Urban development had largely dismantled the once-vibrant Black community, with the hillside increasingly claimed for white residential development and a planned golf course. This geographic displacement reflected broader patterns of urban renewal that often destroyed historic Black neighborhoods under the banner of progress. Meanwhile, limited integration had created new employment opportunities—Nel noted with ambivalence that "you could go downtown and see colored people working in the dime store behind the counters, even handling money with cash-register keys around their necks." These changes represented both advancement and erasure, gains in economic opportunity accompanied by losses in community solidarity and cultural autonomy. Against this backdrop of change, the aging Nel embarked on a personal journey of memory and reconciliation. Her routine visit to Eva Peace at a nursing home triggered an unexpected confrontation when the elderly woman accused Nel—not Sula—of being responsible for Chicken Little's drowning decades earlier. This shocking accusation forced Nel to reexamine her own moral position and the foundations of her lifelong resentment toward Sula. Eva's pointed question—"How do you know it was you [who was good]? Maybe it was me [Sula]"—challenged Nel's comfortable self-righteousness and initiated a profound reassessment of her life. This reckoning culminated at Sula's gravesite, where Nel finally confronted the complicated truth of their relationship. In the novel's most poignant revelation, Nel realized that her decades of mourning had fundamentally misidentified her loss: "All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude." This epiphany unveiled that her deepest grief was not for her husband's abandonment but for the friendship with Sula that had given her life its most profound meaning. Her cry—"O Lord, Sula, girl, girl, girlgirlgirl"—released emotions suppressed for twenty-five years, acknowledging the centrality of female friendship in her emotional life despite societal emphasis on heterosexual relationships. Nel's belated understanding illuminated the novel's central insight about how conformity to social expectations can obscure authentic emotional truth. Her decades of respectable widowhood had earned community approval but left her emotionally diminished. Conversely, Sula's rebellion had brought ostracism but allowed for honest self-expression. Neither path offered complete fulfillment, suggesting the inadequacy of available options for Black women in mid-century America. Nel's final reconciliation with Sula's memory suggested that authentic recognition between women might offer healing unavailable through conventional social roles, even as the physical community that had shaped them both continued to disappear under the relentless pressures of economic development and racial "progress" that prioritized integration over preservation of autonomous Black spaces.

Summary

Throughout this powerful narrative of friendship, community, and transformation, we witness the unfolding tension between individual autonomy and collective survival that shaped African American life across the twentieth century. The Bottom's evolution from a segregated enclave to a disappearing community reflects the larger historical paradox faced by Black Americans: progress toward integration often came at the cost of distinctive cultural spaces and independent institutions. Similarly, the central relationship between Nel and Sula embodies the fundamental dilemma of marginalized individuals—whether to accommodate external expectations for safety and acceptance or to risk ostracism by pursuing authentic self-determination. This tension manifests repeatedly in characters' choices about sexuality, family responsibility, work, and communal obligation. The historical journey charted across these decades offers profound insights for contemporary understanding of community and identity. First, it reveals how marginalized communities simultaneously provide essential support for members while enforcing conformity through powerful social sanctions. Second, it illustrates how rebellion against oppressive norms can inadvertently reinforce isolation when pursued without strategic alliance-building. Finally, it suggests that authentic connection across difference—exemplified in Nel and Sula's complex friendship—offers potential healing for both individuals and communities fractured by external pressures and internal conflicts. As we navigate our own era's struggles with community dissolution, technological isolation, and identity politics, this historical perspective reminds us that meaningful human connection has always required navigating the delicate balance between belonging and becoming, between honoring collective wisdom and pursuing individual truth.

About Author

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Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist and editor. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.The National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities, in 1996. She was honored with the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters the same year. President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on May 29, 2012. She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction in 2016. Morrison was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2020.

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