Flashcards for Sula

Ajax (Albert Jacks)

Ajax (Albert Jacks) is a minor but thematically significant character in Toni Morrison's Sula.

character

Chicken Little

Chicken Little is a young Black boy in Toni Morrison's Sula whose brief appearance carries significant narrative weight.

character

Eva Peace

Eva Peace is the strong matriarch of the Peace household in Toni Morrison's Sula, a woman whose life is shaped by intense acts of determination and a fierce, sometimes frightening love.

character

Hannah Peace

Hannah Peace is Eva Peace's middle child and the mother of Sula, representing a figure of uncomplicated and almost impersonal sensuality, as well as passive maternal warmth, in Toni Morrison's Sula.

character

Helene Wright

Helene Wright is Nel's mother and a powerful symbol of respectability and social conformity in Toni Morrison's Sula.

character

Jude Greene

Jude Greene is a secondary but crucial character in Toni Morrison's Sula.

character

Nel Wright

Nel Wright is one of the two main characters in Toni Morrison's Sula, providing a moral and social framework against which Sula Peace's radical freedom is assessed.

character

Plum (Ralph) Peace

Plum Peace (Ralph) is Eva Peace's youngest child and only son, whose brief yet devastating journey anchors one of the novel's most disturbing and morally complex scenes.

character

Shadrack

Shadrack is a Black World War I veteran who returns to the Bottom, an African American hillside community in Medallion, Ohio, deeply affected by the psychological scars of war.

character

Sula Peace

Sula Peace is the main character in Toni Morrison's 1973 novel Sula.

character

“In a way, her strangeness, her naïveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination.”

This line comes from Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) and is spoken by the third-person omniscient narrator, likely in the chapter that explores Sula's character and inner thoughts, often linked to the "1937" section.

Omniscient Narrator · 1937

“Sula was wrong. Hell ain't things lasting forever. Hell is change.”

This line is spoken by Ajax (Albert Jacks) in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) as he reflects on his philosophy during his relationship with Sula Peace.

Ajax (Albert Jacks) · 1939

“You are my best thing.”

In Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), a line is spoken by Paul D to Sethe—but hold on: that line actually belongs to Beloved.

Paul D · Part Three

“I know what every colored woman in this country is doing… Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods.”

This bold statement is made by Sula Peace near the end of Toni Morrison's novel Sula (1973) as she lies dying and speaks to her childhood best friend Nel Wright.

Sula Peace · 1940

“They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolor visions.”

This line appears early in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), in a chapter set in 1922, as the narrator reflects on the childhood friendship between Sula Peace and Nel Wright.

Narrator (third-person omniscient) · 1922

“Being good to somebody is just like being mean to somebody. Risky. You don't get nothing for it.”

This line is spoken by Nel Wright near the end of Toni Morrison's Sula (1973), as she considers the painful lessons her lifelong friendship with Sula Peace has taught her.

Nel Wright · 1965

“She had clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one and the same thing.”

This reflection belongs to Sula Peace near the end of Toni Morrison's novel Sula (1973), as Sula lies dying and thinks about her lifelong bond with Nel Wright.

Sula Peace (narrative free indirect discourse) · 1940

“Now Nel belonged to the town and all of its ways. She had given herself over to them, and the happiness that flooded her now was the happiness of belonging.”

This passage appears in Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) and is presented through the voice of a third-person omniscient narrator reflecting on Nel Wright after Sula Peace departs from Medallion for a decade.

Narrator (third-person omniscient, reflecting Nel Wright) · 1937

“It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

This haunting line closes Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) and is spoken by Nel Wright in the novel's final scene as she mourns her childhood best friend and lifelong foil, Sula Peace, years after Sula's death.

Nel Wright · 1965 (final dated chapter/epilogue)

“She had no center, no speck around which to grow.”

This line is from Toni Morrison's Sula (1973) and is spoken by the novel's third-person omniscient narrator, offering a psychological insight into Sula Peace.

Narrator (third-person omniscient) · 1937

Fire

In Toni Morrison's Sula, fire represents destructive power, transgression, and the frightening outcomes of uncontrolled impulses.

National Suicide Day

In Toni Morrison's Sula, National Suicide Day—an annual ritual held on January 3rd by Shadrack—captures Medallion's troubled relationship with death, trauma, and the quest for mental stability.

Sula's Birthmark

In Toni Morrison's Sula, the dark birthmark above Sula Peace's eye serves as a complex symbol of her otherness and identity, as well as the way society assigns meaning to Black women's bodies.

The Bottom (the Black neighborhood)

In Toni Morrison's Sula, the Bottom—a Black neighborhood situated on the hills above Medallion, Ohio—captures the harsh reversal of power, promise, and belonging.

The Plague of Robins

In Toni Morrison's Sula, the sudden influx of robins in the Bottom before Sula's return highlights a sense of unnatural disruption, moral chaos, and the community's deep discomfort with things beyond its control.

Water

In Toni Morrison's Sula, water symbolizes both destruction and release, guiding characters toward death, transformation, and the unpredictable tides of fate.

Symbolism

The birthmark above Sula's eye is the novel's most potent symbol, and its meaning changes depending on who's looking.

Imagery

Morrison's imagery is striking and clear, grounding complex feelings of grief, desire, and evil in both the body and the natural world.

Metaphor

Morrison develops the novel's main argument through metaphor instead of a formal thesis.

Irony

Irony runs throughout the novel at every level.

Juxtaposition

The novel contrasts Nel and Sula as complementary opposites — order and transgression, community and self, survival and freedom.

Personification

The Bottom is portrayed as a living entity, a community with its own moods, memories, and the ability to make collective decisions.

Narrative Poem

Morrison uses a non-linear, all-knowing narrative that jumps across decades, characters, and viewpoints.

Motif

Water serves as a recurring motif intertwined with themes of violence, desire, and death.

Extended Metaphor

The relationship between Nel and Sula serves as a powerful metaphor for the fragmented Black female identity shaped by patriarchy and racism.

Pathetic Fallacy

Morrison uses the natural world to reflect and amplify human emotions throughout the novel.

Paradox

Paradox shapes the logic of the novel.

Elegy

The novel maintains a mournful tone, lamenting not just individual deaths but the loss of the Bottom itself.