Sula+student+page

SULA student page.

Gennady Matyuhsov Did mine in note form

Friendship > > ===== Organised work, Genna, with helpful points to show the development. Beware of over-simplifying sometimes .=====
 * ** Sula and Nel
 * o Before Jude
 * § Mirrors of each other
 * § Nel saying that talking to Sula is like having a discussion with herself
 * § Shared secretes
 * § Full knowledge of each other (Reoccurring: death of the Chicken Little, Girl stories, Sula hurting herself to fend off the “thugs”) Yes, although at the end we find out things were not quite as they seemed, right?
 * o Upon meeting Jude (Marriage)
 * § Created separation between Sula and Nel as Nel dedicated more time to Jude
 * § Sula left, since I believe she felt that she left Nel settled and well prepared
 * § Opposite idea of relationship with men created additional tension, as Sula had approach of Hannah and didn’t take men seriously, while Nel had more of an approach of being a faithful and committed housewife.
 * o Sula comeback
 * § Reunited friends. Sula brings a lot to Nel, who is wrapped in her 'gray web'; her life perks up a lot..
 * § Sula having an affair with Jude
 * § Nel feeling betrayed by both Jude and Sula
 * § Having no one to consult with
 * § Sula friendship turns into Hatred - NO. That word is not used
 * o After Sula getting sick / death
 * § Nel just comes in to visit and bring medicine, noting that Sula has not changed
 * § Nel getting angry at Sula. Nel has to completely re-think some of the assumptions she made about who was 'good' and who was 'bad'
 * § Than Nel meeting Eva
 * § Nel realizing that her and Sula were way more than friends.** Express this carefully! She realises they were very good friends AND that this mattered to her more than her relation with Jude **.

Post your work/comments/questions here. All wiki members have the right to edit the page. Ms. Short adds comments with yellow highlighting.

Feel free to comment (politely) on posts that your friends have put.

Love - David Can Umar David Can Umar

1. The love between Eva and her children is a non-conventional one where instead of her showing caring sympathy and playing with them, she struggles to keep them alive.

“Them big old eyes in your head would a been two holes full of maggots if I hadn’t” "What would I look like leapin' 'round that little old room room playin' with youngins with three beets to my name?" This shows Eva explaining to Hannah that she didn't have time to play with her children because she was too busy thinking about where the next food was coming from. Her priority was keeping them alive. Yes exactly. Does Morrison give any sign of 'judging' such behaviour? 2. When Sula overhears her mum saying that she loves Sula but doesn’t like her this gives a different idea and perspective on love. And what is this different perspective? Remember that hearing this completely 'throws' Sula, leaving her with no faith in other people. If you can't trust your mother... “You love her, like I love sula. I just don’t like her. That’s the difference.”

3. The idea of love between Nel and Jude is another story entirely, they are together not because they love each other but because they fit well together. Nel doesn’t even use the word ‘love’ but instead ‘knew’ to describe her feelings towards Jude. "Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a kitchen... The two of them together would make one Jude." This is a sort of 'sacrificial' use of Nel, isn't it?

These are all examples of non conventional love, not where you show your affection or play and spend time with your loved one. Toni Morrison is maybe trying to make us look at our own feelings towards the people we “love”.

Helpful points for consideration, David

Thijs Kooman Its not great but i hope that it answers the questions

First, she gets to know him, she knows him from other woman, as he is a ladies man, although he does not exploit them. She knew him from school that was when she first got exited about him. She sees meets him when he brings two bottles of milk for her, although she does not like milk. He then comes into her house and drinks the milk, then, gives her the bottle. She then has sex with him. They then have a long sexual although also very intimate relationship, they also have a friendly chatty relationship. He likes her because she is unorganized. She was trying to get a homie feeling, and he did not want that. Yes. It made him feel like he was going back home, and sula was so similar to his mother. (But his mother was the one woman he admired and loved. ) She had cleaned the house, and he could smell the sent of a nest. He took everything he could, but forgot his drivers license. Ajax, full name Albert Jackson is a man that is portrayed as one who seeks to not really have any long term connection with woman. For most of the woman in town, he is a player, although unlike most player he is still loved by the woman. When Ajax is being introduced to use by Morison, we are told that woman fight over him. We are also told that as soon as a woman wants to settle down with Ajax, he leaves. He is described as attractive. Since Sula had sex with Jude, he left Nel and broke her housewife rhythm. Before the conflict, Nel felt like she was talking to herself when with Sula (a positive thing), although when Nel walks into Sula and jude having sex, she suddenly cant stop noticing the dust under the bed. This shows her sudden change in mindset. Later, Nel asks sula if he loved Jude, Sula answers by saying no. This makes Nel really angry as she “stole” Jude from her for no actual reason, just for fun. You actually answer a different question, except where you say that Nel's 'rhythm' was broken. This needed developing.
 * 1) 1. Summaries the stages of love that Sula goes through. How she feels, from the moment she first sees him. How Sula feels about Ajax.
 * 1) 2. Why does Ajax leave.
 * 1) 3. Write a concise portrait of Ajax, showing the contrasting elements in his nature.
 * 1) 4. What crucial information do we learn about how Nel has changed.

Reoccurring things, symbolic meaning is unknown to me.
 * 1) 5. Explain/comment on alabaster and loam.

The explicit sex might she the magnitude of the relationship between Jude and Sula.
 * 1) 6. Why do you think Morison included the explicit sex?

Sula lied to the community and us the reader about being scared of Eva. She sent Eva to a retirement home to get ride of her for the house, instead of having to take care of her herself. Later in the story we learn that she lied = slap in the face
 * 1) 7. What is the slap in the face?

Thank you, Thijs. We'll go over these questions together in class as they were for all students.

**DEATH:**Alexandra Mant.

Lots of work here, Alexandra. We'll go over it again in class.

The chapter of 1919 opens on the image of death with the national suicide day. It symbolizes the death of the soldiers at war as well as a way to deal with the non anticipatable part and unknown side of death.“it was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both.” Yes, this is important.

The chapter that follows also opens into a death scene. The death of Nel’s great grandmother Cecile draws us to meeting her grandmother as well as us meting Nel for the first time.

In both chapters there is a shortage of emotions, although Toni does mention emotions within the character “it was with mixed emotions” she herself avoids any emotional expression that is later on repeated with other deaths. Cecile’s death is only marked by “they were too late” and was hardly mentioned again. Toni MORRISON ! tends to describes death either with strong detail or in a very serial way. When describing a death calmly, Toni indirectly suggests the death as she did for Cecile using “they were too late”. For Chicken Little it was also similar using “the water darkened and closed” and then “somebody saw” to portray their deaths. The third death that is very calmly suggested is Sula’s. Sula is conscious threw her death and it’s when she realized she is no longer breathing that we realize she has died. “Her body did not need oxygen. She was dead” and that is all we get.

Chicken's is one of the only death that does leed to a small amount of emotion, shock to beggin with followed by sadness expressed by sula's crying at the weeding.

Cecile’s death is the only death that is passed by quiet quickly, the rest are all very detailed (but you say, rightly, that Plum's and Cecile's dying are not described including the death of the soldier that marked Shadrack so badly but there is never any emotional detail. “the body of the headless soldier ran on” “drip and slime of brain tissue”. The gore details of death opposing to the serial description of it comes back explicitly with Hannah. When she burn Toni depicts it with great detail “hot and bubbling flesh”, “gesturing and bobbing like a sprung jack in a box”. Isn't the 'emotional detail' in the traumas affecting the witnesses - Shadrack, Eva....?

Plums death also caused by fire was not very explicit, the way Eva described his death was as a sort of ritual, but the actual moment of his burning was passed over very quickly compared to Hannah’s. “as the whoosh of flames engulfed him, she shut the door”. Remember he died 'in private', alone in his room, whilst Hannah dies in public with lots of witnesses - including people who act, cry or mourn.... The use of fire is like a form of cleansing and I think that is why there is a definite idea of blessing. “some kind of baptism, some kind of blessing he though”. Plum’s death is another example of the person being conscious just before or after the death.

Water and fire seem to be a recurring symbol of death in the book. Although water turns fire out, water Is still used as a deadly factor especially when regarding the water that was supposed to turn Hannah out turning into steam which kills her.

__RACISM:__ Linda Rousseva


 * 1) The assumptions both the white conductor and black men make about Helene’s nervous smile when she by accidentally gets on the wrong carriage.
 * 2) “Her glance moved beyond the white man's face to the passengers seated behind him. Four or five black faces were watching, two belonging to soldiers still in their shit-colored uniforms and peaked caps. She saw their closed faces, their locked eyes, and turned for compassion to the gray eyes of the conductor.
 * 3) Shows that shared race doesn’t straight away create a sense of community/unity à the soldiers are unwilling/perhaps incapable of helping Helene out and in fact judge her for that smile which their misinterpret as ‘sleazy’. Yes, indeed. Morrison never idealises her portrait of the black people.
 * 4) “Nel was the color of wet sandpaper – just dark enough to escape the blows of the pitch-black truebloods and the contempt of old women who worried about such things as **bad blood mixtures** and knew that the origins of a mule and a mulatto were one and the same”
 * 5) Shows that there is racism within the races too, and that black people are just as racist against white as white are against black: they do NOT want to have anything to do with the whites, so a lighter skin color is largely looked down upon, since it suggests that somewhere along the line someone had an interracial relationship (scandalous!)
 * 6) “they insisted that all unions between white men and black women be rape; for a black woman to be willing was literally unthinkable. **In that way, they regarded integration with precisely the same venom that white people did.”**
 * 7) Morrison is showing that black people are just as racist as whites, and showing the whole situation in a rather ugly light: she isn’t showing the blacks as the victims and the whites as the ‘bad guys’, but instead showing the struggle & hatred of the blacks against the whites
 * 8) “He shook his head in disgust at the kind of parents who would drown their own children. When, he wondered, will those people ever be anything but animals, fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only **mules didn’t kill each other the way niggers did**.”
 * 9) White people automatically assume that black people kill each other and have no sense of dignity or caring whatsoever; Morrison uses this insight on the bargeman’s thoughts to show the extent of the racism from the white people towards the black, and how it manifests itself in their thoughts and attitudes (they have no respect for the black at all, seen by how the bargeman treats “the corpse”)
 * 10) “he dragged the sack away and hooked it over the side, so that the Chicken’s body was half in and half out of the water.”
 * 11) Sula’s description as black men being “**the envy of the world**” with a description of why (summarizing stereotypes/prejudices that black men have to face)
 * 12) “everything in the world loves you. White men love you. … The only they want do is cut off a nigger’s privates. … [white women] chase you all to every corner of the earth, feel for you under every bed. … if they don’t get the rape they looking for, their scream it anyway just so the search won’t be in vain. Colored women worry themselves into bad health just trying to hand on to your cuffs. Even little children – white and black, boys and girls – spend all their childhood eating their hearts out ‘cause they think you don’t love them
 * 13) “Just over there was **the colored part of the cemetery**. She went in. Sula was buried there”
 * 14) Racism does not even end at with death! There is even segregation in the cemetery

Linda, all these points are excellent, well illustrated by the quotations and concisely commented on. What remains to be done is to answer the question that is begging: so what is Morrison saying about racism? It's the 'so what' question. Fundamental! Try and write a paragraph to answer it.

By the way, remember to include reference to the overt racism in the policy of not employing black men on the building of the New River Road. Reference then follows to the effect this had on Jude, and so on Nel etc. etc.

Tanya Coton

1..English questions: SULA


 * 1) ** Summaries the stages of the 'love' and 'attraction' that Sula goes through. How Sula feels about Ajax. **

Firstly, as Ajax is known for being a ‘ladies man’ Sula heard about him through another woman. She then first got to know Ajax through school ??? No, but when she was at school she would walk past him and other men lounging around the Pool Hall and that was the period where she felt excited about him. They then had their second encounter when he brings her two bottles of milk that he had stolen from somebody else’s porch, even though she dislikes milk. In that ‘scene’, he enters her house and later on, they have sex. How would you describe how she feels about Ajax then? Ajax finds Sula very attractive due to her ‘scruffiness’. Once Ajax leaves, she feels some sort of ‘void’ within her, as if something drastic was missing.


 * 1) ** Why does Ajax leave? **

Ajax left Sula because she made too much effort, to impress him and felt like he had already lived through this experience too many times before; as said in page 133 “In her words, in her voice, was a sound he knew well.” Sula had set the “gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected the scent of the nest.” (p. 133) This scared him tremendously as it became too ‘homey’. He also liked the idea of her ‘messiness’. Yes.


 * 1) ** Write a concise portrait showing the contrasting elements in his nature. **

Ajax or Albert Jackson, is a tall man with brown eyes, black hair and “black skin. Very black” and the oldest of 7. He is considered a very ‘sexy’ man that a lot of women (who bore him) run after and fight over. He loves his mother and has a serious obsession for airplanes. Not clear what the contrasts are. You need to comment on the elements in your list, clearly including the fact that he never stays with any of the women he seduces.


 * 1) ** What crutial information about how Nel has changed according to Sula. (In what ways has she changed)???? **


 * 1) ** Explain/comment on alabaster and loam **


 * 1) ** Why do you think Morrison included all the explicit sex… **

I believe that Toni Morrison added in the explicit sex was to amplify the emotions of Sula when with Jude. Or with Ajax?? We need to come back to this in class.