Sula: 1922 Summary & Analysis

It is 1922, and Sula and Nel are walking through the Bottom. They’re going to the local ice cream parlor, Edna Finch’s Mellow House, even though it’s a little too cold for ice cream. As they walk, men—sitting on stoops and front porches—notice them walking. Some of the men tip their hats, while others open and close their thighs. One 21-year-old man, whose name is Ajax, watches Sula and Nel and says, “Pig meat.” Sula and Nel are secretly delighted to have attracted the attention of the men. They enjoy walking through town and exciting the men—whom they still don’t entirely understand.

The narrator jumps back to describe how Nel and Sula meet. They attend Garfield Primary School together. Both are lonely and quiet as children, and like to fantasize about meeting a “prince” one day. Nel lives in a very orderly house, presided over by her mother, Helene. Sula’s house, on the other hand, is always chaotic when she is growing up. Yet Nel and Sula have a lot in common: they both have “distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers,” and in 1922 they are both twelve years old. Nel is light-skinned, almost mulatto—if she’d been any lighter-skinned, some of the “truebloods” in the Bottom would have bullied her. Sula’s skin is dark brown, and she has a strange birthmark above her eyebrow, which is shaped like a stemmed rose. Every year, her birthmark grows darker.

Sula and Nel become friends very suddenly when they are twelve, for reasons neither of them can describe. They become friends when a group of Irish immigrants come to Medallion to bully the black schoolchildren. The Irish had moved to Ohio from Ireland, hoping for a land of opportunity. Instead, they found a country full of racists who hated all immigrants. The Irish then tried to prove that they were white, too, by bulling the blacks in Ohio.

In 1922, four Irish boys come to Garfield to tease the schoolchildren. Sula, who is standing near Nel, pulls a knife out of her coat and points it at the boys. Instead of trying to attack the Irish boys, however, Sula cuts the tip of her own finger, spurting blood everywhere. Sula whispers, “If I can do that to myself, what you suppose I’ll do to you?” Sula’s tactic works, and the Irish boys run away.

After scaring away the Irish boys, Sula becomes good friends with Nel. They are adventurous, and love to be distracted by new things—the smell of tar pouring in a road, for example. Sula inspires Nel to disobey her mother’s orders—although Nel is supposed to “pull her nose” with a clothespin (something that would supposedly make her nose look prettier as an adult) and straighten her hair every Saturday, Sula convinces Nel to avoid these tasks whenever she can.

In the summer of 1922, Sula and Nel become conscious that there are “beautiful boys” all around them. They decide to find some “mischief” down by the river, where the boys like to swim. Sula leaves her house to go to the river in the afternoon. As she leaves, she hears two of Hannah’s friends, Patsy and Valentine, talking about how they made the mistake of having their children far too early. Hannah laughs and tells her friends that a parent will always love her own children—she just won’t “like” them. Hannah then admits to not liking Sula. Sula is shocked by this pronouncement, and runs away from the house.

Nel and Sula walk toward the river. They play with twigs and grass and wait for boys to arrive at the river’s bank. Before long, they see a boy walking toward the river, picking his nose. Nel yells at the boy, whose name is Chicken Little, to stop picking his nose, and Chicken Little yells backs at Nel to leave him alone. Sula is gentler, and offers to show Chicken Little how to climb a tree. Together, Sula and Chicken Little climb up a tall tree and slide out on the branch. At first, Chicken Little is afraid, but Sula teases him until he’s laughing. Nel calls for them to come down, and they climb down the tree. Sula then starts to swing Chicken Little around by his hands as he laughs delightedly. Suddenly he slips from Sula’s grip and flies out into the water. To Nel and Sula’s surprise, Chicken Little doesn’t bob to the surface of the water—he seems to have been lost in the river.

Nel and Sula look nervously at the water. They can’t imagine where Chicken Little could have fallen. Frantic, they turn and run to the nearest shack, which belongs to Shadrack. Sula bangs on the door and walks inside the shack, but finds that no one is inside. In the midst of her terror, Sula thinks about everything she knows about Shadrack—he’s wild, drunk, and sometimes shows his penis in the street. Suddenly, she hears a noise—Shadrack is standing right behind her.

Shadrack has just entered his shack, where Sula is standing. He smiles, and Sula tries to ask him if he’s seen what just happened out on the river. Before she can finish her question, however, Shadrack says, “Always.” Sula panics and runs outside, back to Nel. Nel tells her “it ain’t your fault,” and asks her where the belt on her dress has gone. Sula can only shake her head—it seems that her belt came off in Shadrack’s shack.

The narrator describes what became of Chicken Little: a day later, a bargeman on the river noticed Chicken Little’s body. The bargeman would have left the body had he not noticed that it belonged to a child. It takes three more days before anyone can move Chicken Little to the embalmer, and by that time, even his own mother can’t recognize his body.

A funeral is held for Chicken Little. The choir sings hymns, and Nel and Sula, both in attendance at the funeral, can’t bear to look at each other. Nel can feel that she’s going to be arrested for killing Chicken Little at any moment. Sula simply cries. As the funeral proceeds, Reverend Deal, the head of the church, proceeds with a sermon in which he praises Jesus, and reminds his congregation to come together, remembering that most of the families in the Bottom have lost loved ones in tragic ways.

Chicken Little is buried in the Bottom’s cemetery, next to his aunt and his grandfather. Nel and Sula watch his burial, holding hands. They sense that they’ll never be able to forget the sound of Chicken Little’s childish laughter. Then they turn and walk home, still holding hands.