Toni Morrison

美國國務院國際資訊局出版物

The Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved.

1993 the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The first African-American woman to win the award.

Born in Ohio. (1931-)

Fiction: Complex experience of Afro-American.

Novel: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz…

Toni Morrison (1931-)

Sula

Race Womanhood The effects of history The contingencies of love Examining how all four intertwine to affect the beliefs and actions of individuals.

Sula: Part OneI. Prologue: Bottom

A. The changes taking place in the once all-black neighborhood known as the Bottom in the hills above the once all-white town of Medallion, Ohio.

B. Bottom received its name from a slave owner's greedy deception of a slave (1994).

II. 1919: Shadrack

A.Shadrack suffered a traumatic experience in World War I in 1917.

B.“National Suicide Day” (1999).

III. 1920: Helene Wright Cecile

a religious grandmother

Rochelle, a Creole prostitute

Helene

Nel Wiley Wright

IV. 1921: Eva Peace

Eva Peace

Hannah

Eva (Pearl)

BoyBoy

Ralph (Plum)

+ Rekus= Sula

V. 1922: Sula and NelA.Nel and Sula had radically different personalities: Nel was quiet and unassuming while Sula was spontaneous and aggressive. Together, the girls seemed to form two halves of a whole person. B. “Their friendship was so close, they themselves had difficulty distinguishing one’s thoughts from the other’s…They never quarreled (2031). C. “[…] I love Sula. I just don’t like her” (2019).

V. 1922: Sula and Nel

D. Sula playfully swung Chicken Little

around by his hands, but he accidentally slipped from her grip. He fell into the river and drowned (2021).

E. Shadrack told Sula “Always” (2021).

F. The white sheriff thought to throw

Chicken Little back to the water (2022).

IV. 1923: Hannah’s Death

A. “Mamma, did you ever love us?” (2023).

B. “What’d you kill Plum for, Mamma?” (2025).

1. “[H]e wanted to crawl back in my womb…” (2026).

2. “I had to keep him out so I just thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man” (2026).

A. “[Hannah] dreamed of a wedding in a red bridal gown…”(2026).

B. “She [Eva] saw Hannah burning…she threw herself out of window” (2028).

1. Eva and Hannah were sent to the hospital in the same ambulance, and Hannah died on the way (2028).

2. Eva considered that “Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed but because she was interested” (2029).

IV. 1923: Hannah’s Death

VII. 1927: Nel’s Wedding

A. Jude married Nel. 1. Jude was a waiter at the Hotel Medallion. Howe

ver, he longed to have a “man's job”.2. The blacks were not allowed to build the New

River Road (2030). 3. “With her he was head of a household pinned to

an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. The two of them together would make one Jude” (2031).

B. Sula left the Bottom to attend college. She did not return for 10 years (2032).

Sula: Part One I. 1937: Sula’s Return

A. “Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to Medallion” (2032).

B. Eva criticized Sula’s dress and her remaining unmarried (2033-4).

C. Sula quarreled with Eva. Sula was afraid of Eva and sent her to a nursing home that the white church run, shocking the entire community (2034).

D. Sula had sex with Jude and was found by Nel. Jude left Nel.

II. 1939: Sula and Ajax

A. People in the town regarded Sula as a bitch. There were rumors about her.

B. “[T]he meaning of the birthmark over her eye; it was not a stemmed rose, or a snake, it was Hannah’s ashes marking her from the very beginning” (2044).

C. In order to justify their statement, “[t]hey began to cherish their husbands and wives, protect their children, repair their homes and in general band together against the devil in their midst” (2046).

D. Nel thought, “a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman” (2046).

E. Ajax and Sula had a passionate affair, enjoying one another's independence.

F. For the first time in her life, Sula experienced the desire for possession of her lover (2052).

G. When Ajax sensed her new domestic impulse, he abandoned the relationship. She was devastated by his abandonment.

H. The real name of Ajax was “Albert Jacks” (2054).

III. 1940: Revelation

A. When Sula fell seriously ill, Nel went to see her for the first time in three years.

B. The important conversations between Sula and Nel.

1. Nel: “You a woman and a colored woman at that. You can’t act like a man”.

Sula: “You repeating yourself” (2057). 2. Every colored woman in this country is dying like a stump. “Me [Sula], I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world” (2057).

3. Sula: “My lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely?” (2057-8).

4. Sula didn’t love Jude. He just filled up the space in Sula’s head (2058).

5. Sula: “If we were such good friends, how come you couldn’t get over it?” (2058).

6. Sula: “About who was good. How you know it was you?”

“I mean maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe it was me” (2059).

D. Sula was dead.

IV. 1941: After Sula’s Death

A. The community of the Bottom regards Sula’s death as a good omen (2060).

B. A devastating frost overtakes the area (2061).

C. Shadrack felt lonely for the first time after war (2063).

D. Sula’s belt was Shadrack’s “sign of a visitor, his only one” (2064).

E. After Sula’s death, Shadrack realized there was no “always” (2064).

Many of the Bottom's residents, follow Shadrack on his march.

They walk to the tunnel where they begin to vandalize the construction site because the jobs have again been denied to black workers.

Suddenly, it collapses, and many of Shadrack's followers, including the Deweys, drown (2065-6).

V. 1965: Nel’s AwakeningA. The black community of the Bottom has slowly move

d into the once all-white city of Medallion to build homes.

B. “Only rich white folks were building homes in the hills” (2068).

C. People lost the community because people lived in isolated house.

D. Eva accused Nel for killing Chicken Little. It reminded her that she felt good to see him fall and she remained calm at that time (2070).

E. “All that time, all that time, I [Nel] thought I was missing Jude” (2072). Nel whispered Sula's name and then cried out in grief for her deceased friend.

Questions: 1. Was it possible that Sula and Nel are lesbians?2. Did Eva kill Hannah? 3. What was Eva’s definition of “love” and “like”? 4. What important theme in Sula did Shadrack represent?5. What was the possible symbolic significance of Eva's mi

ssing leg?6. What were some possible reasons for Eva's decision to k

ill Plum? 7. What was the meaning of Sula’s birthmark? 8. Sula thought “The real hell of Hell is that it is forever”,

does it have something to do with Shadrack’s “Always”?

9. Why did Shadrack like Sula? 10. Why did Sula like to think of sex as “wicked”? (2048)