An Essay on Toni Morrison’s Novel Sula: A Sacrificial Scapegoat:
Part of Morrison’s beautiful talent for writing lies in her ability to create ethically ambiguous situations for her readers. In the novel Sula, the reader is left to ask “Is Sula truly a menace to society, as the community seems to think she is? Is she truly as bad as the people think she is? Or is ‘bad’ all a matter of perspective?” Sula lives life by a different standard than the people of Bottom, and as a result they alienate her in their need for a scapegoat. Although the community labels Sula as evil, thinking that they would be better off without her, in all reality, having Sula as a single focus for their misfortunes leads to them living happier, healthier lives.
Their reasons for deciding that Sula is evil are absurd, showing that their labeling of Sula as such has more to do with their need for someone to blame than it does with Sula herself. In support of their claim they list such ludicrous things such as the fact that “Sula did not look her age” (115). Although it may be true that Sula, having lived the city life for the past ten years, has not aged as roughly as the rural women of Bottom, it is hardly proof that she is evil.
They disregard the fact that many women in town sleep around, including Sula’s mother whom the community loved, and they use the excuse of Sula’s easy ways as a reason to ostracize her. The women abhor Sula because “she would lay their husbands once and then no more” (115), which feels like the ultimate insult, as if Sula has stolen and then discarded like trash their most precious possession. Meanwhile, the men concoct a rumor that Sula has sex with white men. In the eyes of this African-American community, “there was nothing lower she could do, nothing filthier” (113). Even though it is true that Sula has a very casual attitude towards sex, sleeping with men as often as possible, this is more a testimony of her upbringing than evidence of Sula’s wickedness.
Considering that Sula “had no intimate knowledge of marriage, having lived in a house with women who thought all men available, and selected from among them with a care only for their tastes,” and that people of Bottom knew of Sula’s family, it does not seem fair for the community to alienate Sula on this basis, yet they do.
In all actuality, the community is not thinking about what is fair to Sula. Without realizing it, they have been longing for a sole object to hold responsible for all that is wrong in their world, and Sula is an easy target because she is dreadfully different. Her upbringing and her experiences have made hers “an experimental life” as she “lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her” (118). In Sula, the people found someone who did not care that she was taking the blame for all of the ills in their society, and the result was that Sula’s presence inadvertently has a positive effect.
By deciding that Sula is a devil to be feared, the people improve.
Once the source of their personal misfortune was identified, they had leave to protect and love one another. They began to cherish their husbands and wives, protect their children, repair their homes and in general band together against the devil in their midst” (117).
Although the community has decided that Sula is evil, acting as if her return to Bottom is the worst thing that could have happened to them, it is indeed one of the best things that could have happened. It seems like, before Sula’s return, men in this town commonly cheat on their wives, yet Sula’s return prompts women to “cherish their men more” (115). Not to say that every woman who has been cheated on is to blame for her husbands infidelity, but a man who feels cherished and appreciated by his wife is certainly less likely to go elsewhere to find these things.
Sula’s presence also prompts some to be better parents. Teapot’s Mamma, who has always been a drunk and somewhat of a neglectful parent, suddenly “became the most devoted mother: sober, clean and industrious” (114), after an event when Sula is falsely accused of hurting Teapot. The story about hurting Teapot is obviously contrived, and the doctor even advises that Teapot’s fracture is a result of poor nutrition, showing that Teapot’s Mamma was really just looking for a good excuse, some motivation, to clean up her act. The threat of having Sula in the community is the perfect motivation for her and everyone else.
Although Sula’s death is said to be the “best news” the people had heard in a long time (150), the events thereafter conclusively prove that Sula was the best thing that could have happened to that community. The mass death that occurs on the suicide day following her death seems to symbolically represent the fact that when Sula died, a large part of the community died too. Sula brought life into the community.
After Sula’s death, a heavy freeze hits Medallion and causes great hardship, foreshadowing the negative changes as a result of Sula’s absence. Teapot is beat by his mamma, and other mother’s in the community also lost their motivation to be great mothers, since “the tension was gone and so was the reason for the effort they had made” (153).
In response to Sula’s placing Eva in a nursing home, people had begun to treat old folks better, but now that Sula was gone, “they returned to a steeping resentment of the burdens of old people” (154). The wives also went back to their old ways. Although they never would have admitted it, or recognized it as such, the loss of Sula left the community feeling hopeless. Without Sula as a focus for their troubles, the people lost the motivation for the improvements they had made. Since Sula’s presence had made them so much better, the backslide that her loss caused left the community bleak and miserable, leading to the events of the following suicide day.
On the day that Shadrack, whom the community had previously also labeled as evil, annually declared as Suicide day, the people unexpectedly band together to destroy the tunnel, which had also been a symbol of hope for them. Whereas the tunnel had brought the hope of work, their desire to destroy it mirrors the feeling of hopelessness caused by the loss of Sula. As a result, many of the people die when the tunnel collapses, symbolically representing the death of hope and life in the community, hope and life that Sula’s presence had inadvertently given them.
In a strange way, the community needed Sula. Even Nel realizes that she has let Sula be her scapegoat, thinking that Sula “took” Jude from her. Nel placed no responsibility on Jude, and in the end realizes that the grief she felt and had determined was from missing Jude was really from missing Sula’s friendship.
Being different often leads to some sort of alienation, yet in Sula’s case it was extreme. The community’s alienation of Sula saves them from their own vices, making Sula somewhat of a sacrificial victim for the community. Charlotte Perkins Gilman once said, “The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society – more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.” Sula’s functional relationship to society was to be their whipping boy. Having no desire to combat their treatment of her as such, she did the job well.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Acceptance Speech. Nobel Lecture. 7 Dec 1993. Nobelprize.org.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Vintage International, 2004.
