Community and Survival in Sula :: Sula Essays

Community and Survival in Sula Sula by Toni Morrison is a very complex novel with many underlying themes. Some of the themes that exist are good and evil, friendship and love, survival and community, and death. In Marie Nigro's article, "In Search of Self: Frustration and Denial in Toni Morrison's Sula" Nigro deals with the themes of survival and community. According to Nigro, "Sula celebrates many lives: It is the story of the friendship of two African-American women; it is the story of growing up black and female; but most of all, it is the story of a community" (1). Sula contains so many important themes that it is hard to say which one is the most important. I agree with Marie Nigro when she says that Sula is a story about community. I believe that community and how the community of Bottom survives is an important theme of the story. But I do not believe that it is a central theme of the story. When I think back on the novel Sula in twenty years, I will remember the relationship and friendship betw een Nel and Sula. I will not remember the dynamics of the community. One of Nigro's main points of her article is how Morrison shows how important work is to the community of Bottom in order to survive. Nigro believes that work is important in Sula because it helps define or not define such as in Sula's case, who the characters are. Nigro argues that the people of Bottom take survival serious because they live in a white male, world. The residents of Bottom do their best by working odd jobs and scrimping and helping each other when in need (2). But they know that they will always have to remain within the boundaries of the hostile white world (2). According to Nigro, survival is also very important for Eva and Hannah. They know they do not have much opportunity being black and female, so they prepare for the winter by canning food in the summer (2). Eva definitely knows how serious survival is because she goes to the extreme of cutting off her own leg (2). Jude is another character, Nigro points out, that needs work.