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Tar Baby
The neglectful, often brutish husband of Eva Peace. BoyBoy marries Eva when she’s still very young, and is a loving, happy husband at first. But after Eva gives birth to three children, BoyBoy abruptly abandons his family, leaving Eva behind to take care of the children. BoyBoy returns to the Bottom several years later, finds Eva confidently raising her family, and then leaves once again, never to return. While he’s not mentioned many times in Sula, BoyBoy is one of the novel’s most important characters—we can sense that if he hadn’t left his family, Eva wouldn’t have become the woman she is.
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BoyBoy Peace Character Timeline in Sula
The timeline below shows where the character BoyBoy Peace appears in Sula. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
1921
...respect from the people in the neighborhood. Everyone knows that she married a man named BoyBoy, and had three children: Hannah, Eva, nicknamed Pearl, and Ralph, nicknamed Plum. BoyBoy was an...
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...the Suggs family and the Jackson family. She often thought back to her marriage to BoyBoy. BoyBoy worked for a white carpenter, with whose help he built a cabin for his...
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...children, and proceeded to build them a large house. She made money by renting out BoyBoy’s old cabin.
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Some three years after leaving, BoyBoy returned to Medallion, and went to see Eva and his children. Eva prepared lemonade for...
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Following BoyBoy’s visit, Eva continued taking care of her family alone. She allowed her cousins to visit...
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...named Rekus who died when Sula, their child, was three. Strangely—considering how much Eva hated BoyBoy—all of Eva’s children loved men. Although Eva herself was very old, she “had a regular...
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1937
...outside. Eva stares at Sula in more or less the same way she stared at BoyBoy the last time she saw him—with pure hatred.
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