Sula, a Character Analysis

Paper Summary:

This paper analyzes the title character Sula, whose multiple identities and outspoken sexuality, the writer suggests, are a result of her lack of father figure and the presence of strong independent eccentric women in Sula's life. The paper discusses Sula's place in Morrison's thematic search for self.

From the Paper:

"One critic, Patricia McKee, takes what seems to me to be a particularly perceptive view of Sula's character. She describes Sula in terms of her "spacing and placing" of experience. In essence, Sula's ways of "closing down or opening up distances between things and persons" is what makes her so different. We see how she creates her own identity and understand some of what makes her an imperfect model for others. In Sula we watch things that are missing and connections that failed or never took place. Sula misses what never was, "things denied or negated" (McKee 1-3). Sula "disconnects elements of meaning that other people connect." (McKee 13) Sula creates her own identity through "distancing. . .like an artist with no art form"(Morrison 121) she doesn't use form to control experience: but rather "realizes the capacity of absence" to "provide definition" McKee (12-13). She destroys what has meaning for others and she does not truly create meaning for herself. "I don't want to make somebody else (babies) I want to make myself " (Morrison 92). Sula is an experimenter with life. . . an active destructive artist who, in the absence of "paints, or clay" or a knowledge of "dance, or strings" (Morrison 121) makes human beings her adventure in life. Sula is her own art form, but she is destructive to herself and others. In the dream she has just before she dies, Sula sees herself as The Clabber Girl Baking Powder lady disintegrating into powder. This, in the end, is how she sees her life, as a fine uncatchable dust."

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