The Truth About Sula

The Truth about Sula

The novel, “Sula,” written by Toni Morrison is novel filled with superstitions, irony, symbolism and self identity. The main character Sula is the epitome of all of the topics mentioned. Throughout the story her various interactions with the citizens, in The Bottoms, brings turmoil to what was thought of as a gifted town. The Nobel Prize winning book, takes a look at a town, that is built on a trick and the residents who live there but about a woman, who brings trouble with her.

The Bottoms, was once a vibrant community, filled with happiness and promise. The Bottoms is above what was once a prodomently white neighborhood in Medallion, Ohio. An all black community, which was once a successful community, is now being torn down in order for a golf course to be built. The story behind The Bottoms; a slave owner named the town based on his feelings towards a slave. The owner gave the land to one of his slaves, after the slave completed several tasks for the owner. The owner told the slave that this land was in fact a gifted land, since it was a land that was covered with hills. The slave was told that the hills that the Bottoms were built on were hills that were closer to Heaven. The piece of land that the owner gave the slave was known as the “good part,” of the hills. However, the owner did not want anything to do with the land, after he gave it to the slave. Delighted, the slave happily took the

land and began a community. During the process of building the community, the slave realized that the land was a bad place to farm on. The deal made between the slave and the owner was in fact a trick, and not much of a gift. A couple of years later, two young girls befriend each other in the town, and one of the girls’ futures puts the town at risk.

A superstition can be defined as a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation. In the novel Sula there were many superstitions. Superstitions in the book first started, after an accident where Sula was swinging a little boy around by his hands, and the boy lets go and he dies. No one knew about the accident, except for Sula and her friend Nel and shortly after the girls fell apart. The next case of bad luck comes when Sula is 13 and Hannah who happens to be her mother, dress catches on fire. From the first two events, it seems that whenever Sula is around, bad things begin to happen. Unable to save Hannah from the fire, she dies. However, the weather on that particular day may suggest that Hannah’s death.

The weather in The Bottoms was described as, having a fierce wind as well as a heat wave. Hannah could have very well been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the book suggests otherwise. From a reader’s point of view, Sula, being that she was the cause of Chicken Little’s death, she had bad luck placed on her