Sula: 1937 Summary & Analysis

The “plague of robins” is another perceived omen, and shows how the people of the Bottom interpret a seemingly natural phenomenon to mean that Sula is evil or somehow bad luck. Morrison also alludes to the Biblical plagues described in the Book of Exodus—as if Sula is bringing divinely ordained misery and sadness with her. Sula’s outsider status in the town is plain from the way Eva—the resident “namer” and representative of the Bottom’s culture—glares at her.

The first sign of a distance between Nel and Sula appears when Sula refuses to answer Nel’s questions right away. This is similar to the way that Plum refused to talk about his time after the war, and we fear that Sula has changed for the worst. Another sign of Sula’s changing loyalties comes when she sends Eva out of her own home. This seems to be unambiguously heartless: Sula is punishing Eva, seemingly for no reason. (We’d been expecting something closer to the other way around: Eva lashing out at Sula.)

In spite of some tension, Nel and Sula seem to still be good friends, despite not talking for a decade. Again, we see a tension between heterosexual love and same-sex friendships (at least in the environment of the time and place, where women are encouraged to compete for men’s attentions). Here, the tension has reversed: Nel has become a little tired of her marriage, and now turns to her girl-friend for happiness.

Sula’s birthmark is another ambiguous sign, like the plague of robins. In one sense, the birthmark may symbolize Sula’s growing maturity: as she accumulates more and more experiences, both good and bad, the mark gets darker and more “worn.”

Sula’s journey out of town is different from the other characters’ journeys: she went to educate herself. Morrison doesn’t linger on descriptions of Sula’s education. We should note that Sula was able to go to college because of Eva’s money, meaning that Eva has sacrificed her own happiness for her family’s betterment once again. (This makes it especially shocking that Sula sends Eva off to a home as soon as she’s back in town.) It’s unclear if Sula is lying about being present for Plum’s death—if she was there (Morrison does mention “some child” crying immediately after Plum’s death), or if she is simply repeating what her mother told her and is using it as justification for sending Eva away. Either way, her proclamation adds to the strange, supernatural, and sinister aura developing around Sula.

We see where Eva gets her money: she’s collected insurance money, turning her misery and her family’s pain into cold, hard cash. It’s ironic that Eva, who’s cared for others with this money all her life, will now be the one the money provides for—even against her will.

There’s a dark side to Jude’s unchanging appearance. He’s still young and good-looking, but he also hasn’t matured or progressed in life: he’s still blindly hoping to find work in the New River Road, even though it seems likely that no work will ever come. We might compare Jude’s unchanging appearance with that of the deweys: the tragedy and lack of opportunity in the Bottom “freezes” these characters in their current states, symbolizing their tacit acceptance of the status quo. Jude’s interpretation of Sula’s birthmark as a snake is important as well: the snake first seems like something evil or ugly (as Jude is angry with Sula at the time), but it is also phallic sign that could represent Jude’s immediate attraction to Sula. On another level, snakes symbolize the temptations of sin (i.e. the snake in the Biblical Garden of Eden story), foreshadowing how Jude will soon “sin” by having an affair with Sula.

Morrison begins this section with another ambiguous sentence. We quickly come to see that Jude is leaving Nel, but we don’t understand why just yet. The irony here is that Jude, who’d seemed to be an unchanging character, is changed as soon as Sula comes into his life—seemingly right after their first conversation.

In less than two paragraphs, Morrison establishes that Jude is attracted to Sula, and then shows Jude and Sula having an affair. Jude walks out on Nel, just as BoyBoy walked out on Eva years and years ago. (Note also that the manner in which Nel catches Sula and Jude mirrors the way that Sula saw Hannah having sex one afternoon, years before.)

Here Morrison makes explicit some of themes of change and constancy that she’s been alluding to lately. While most of the people in the Bottom have accepted that nothing will ever change in their lives, Sula seems to believe that change is possible, and that change has to be better than stagnancy. Even if Sula betrays Nel, she’s also rebelling against the status quo of sadness that has gripped the Bottom for years.

In her grief, Nel turns to her children for happiness, much as Eva turned to childrearing to fight off her own grief when BoyBoy left her. Nel instinctively still wants to be close with Sula, and has to remind herself that they should be enemies now. Nel gives up the friendship for the sake of her principles, and because of the idea that for a woman, a relationship with a man is the most important thing in life.

Nel has been taught that her life is incomplete until she finds a man to settle down with—as we’ve seen, she’s been conscious of this fact at least since the age of twelve. She can’t shake off this way of thinking, despite any evidence to the contrary.