For my extended journal for Toni Morrison's Sula, I decided to describe the movie Fight Club. While that may seem to have no connection whatsoever at all, it is actually relative. First of all you have to understand the opinion debated in discussion that Sula and Nel are one and the same person. Growing up, Nel was a girl without any ambitions or feelings. Because of her mother Nel, "became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showered were calmed by her mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (Morrison 18). But that all changed the day she met Sula; "her new found me-ness, gave her the strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother" (19). They had became instantaneous friends are were inseparable from then on. That is where my point comes in that Nel and Sula are alter-egos of each other. According to Freudian Psychology, Nel is the Superego portion of the young girl; responding to morals and trying to please others by behaving and doing what she's expected to do. Sula on the other hand, represents the Id portion; which reeks of lust and other desires that all humans have to some degree. So basically Nel is the 'good girl' and Sula is the 'bad girl' of the same entity.
Now to relate to Fight Club:
http://aram.free.fr/divx/images/fight_club_front.jpg (shows both Brad Pitt and Edward Norton's Characters, the Id and Superego of the single person "Jack" or Tyler Durton)
Fight Club, based off the novel by Chuck Palahnuik, directed by David Fincher, begins with Edward Norton's character, who doesn't really ever have an official name. He is incredibly sleep deprived, and there's nothing that can help him, until he discovers support groups. By crying in front of random people, he can free himself and finally sleep. He gets addicted to support groups, changing his name, identity, and story for each group. That's the first hint that he himself might not know who he really is.
As the movie progresses, He meets Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, on an airplane. After the flight, the main character returns home to find that his apartment has been blown apart. He calls Tyler Durden and ends up living with him in a run-down house. The two start fighting and hitting each other just to see what it feels like, and enjoy doing it. They then fight often after leaving bars, occasionally drawing crowds. Eventually, they get enough people into the fights that they start the actual fight club in the basement of the local bar. This is when the movie really picks up.
1st RULE: You do not talk about FIGHT CLUB.
2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about FIGHT CLUB.
3rd RULE: If someone says "stop" or goes limp, taps out the fight is over.
4th RULE: Only two guys to a fight.
5th RULE: One fight at a time.
6th RULE: No shirts, no shoes.
7th RULE: Fights will go on as long as they have to.
8th RULE: If this is your first night at FIGHT CLUB, you HAVE to fight.
(taken from http://www.diggingforfire.net/FightClub/)
I'm not going to completely ruin the movie, because it is a great movie that I strongly recommend watching to anyone who is interested in strange movies. But basically Edward Norton's character, I'll call him "Jack" is stuck in a rut. An entirely Superego-made rut. He has to be at work, do his job right. All his furniture has to be perfect. Everything in his life must be "single-serving" and organized. All of this changes when he meets Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden. Tyler is very much a completely Id fueled person. He never thinks twice about what his actions do to others; he steals cars, has lots of sex, vandalizes property, contaminates restaurant industries, etc.
*SPOILER* SKIP IF YOU'RE GOING TO WATCH THE MOVIE
At the end of the movie, when "Jack" realizes that he is Tyler Durton, and that this person he has been around for so long is just his "imaginary friend" whose Id takes over the body whenever Jack's Superego loses conscious, such as when he 'sleeps'. Jack finds out that as Tyler Durden, he has organized a terrorist group that is blowing up many gigantic office buildings in the middle of the city. He is doing this to make a point to everyone, based purely off of desire, the Id portion of the brain. Jack realizes the only way to get rid of Tyler is to "kill himself". So he takes a gun, puts it in his mouth, and shoots. Tyler dies, but Jack is only wounded. Why? Because Jack angled the gun, without Tyler's understanding, so that he shot through his cheek, rather than through his head. Although it is too late to save the buildings from being destroyed, Jack destroys his purely Id self and in the process makes his purely Superego self understand that there needs to be a reasonable balance between the two
*END SPOILER*
Fight Club is a very deep, confusing movie, but it is an excellent movie. I'd recommend watching it twice to fully understand what is going on. But from what I understand from the movie Brad Pitt/Tyler Durden is relatable to Sula because of their Id-based decisions. Furthermore, Edward Norton/Jack and Nel both are dominated by their Superego mindsets. I have learned from both Fight Club and Sula that both Id and Superego exist in everyone, but it is very dangerous for the person's mental state if one side overpowers the other. The ideal would be a perfect balance between the two, where one still can have fun, but is smart and thinks logically as well.
Here's a site with many quotes from Fight Club. This moive has a TON of very memorable and interesting quotes: http://imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Sula: Close Analysis Journal
War holds a heavy burden for all soldiers. Many people die in war, but they are not the only casualties. There are many good people who survive the war, but because of what they've witnessed they will never be the same again. Tim O'Brien writes how throughout the war, "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide" (O'Brien 21). Having to return to normal society after experiencing the hideous faces of war was not an easy task; for many veterans it proved to be more than they could handle. Both Toni Morrison and Tim O'Brien write about how difficult it is for soldiers to re-enter society after war.
In Toni Morrison's Sula, she writes about the character Shadrack. Shadrack went to war in December of 1917, "a young man of hardly twenty, his head full of nothing and his mouth recalling the taste of lipstick" (Morrison 7). While Shadrack was in war, "he expected to be terrified or exhilarated - to feel something very strong. In fact, he felt only the bite of a nail in his boot" (Morrison 7-8). Eventually Shadrack's experience in war led him to an unknown injury, sending him home to a hospital, "when Shadrack opened his eyes he was propped up in a small bed. Before on a tray was a large tin plate divided into three triangles" (Morrison 8). Because of his violent tendancies, Shadrack was released from the hospital long before he should have been. Once he pulled himself together a little bit, he instituted National Suicide Day, hoping that, "if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free" (Morrison 14). After returning from the war, he lived out his days, "in a shack on the riverbank that had once belonged to his grandfather long time dead. On Tuesday and Friday he sold the fish he had caught that morning, the rest of the week he was drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous" (Morrison 15). Needless to say, Shadrack had changed immensly from the man he was before he went to serve his country.
In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, he shows the struggles of character Norman Bowker once he returns from the Vietnam war. Bowker's most traumatizing experience in war was when his friend, Kiowa, died right next to him. That experience is something Bowker has to "carry" the rest of his life. He survived the war, but when he came back he was not the same; "the war was over and there was no place in particular to go" (O'Brien 137). He wanted his story to be told, maybe in hopes of "objectifying his own experience" (O'Brien 158). Norman writes out his story for Tim O'Brien to write. It is a hard task for Tim to do, and by the time he was able to figure out how to write the story, it was too late. O'Brien got a letter "In August of 1978 [Bowker's] mother sent me a brief note explaining what had happened...he used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe. There was no suicide note" (O'Brien 160). Norman Bowker is Tim's example of a man who physically survived the war, but a part of him still died over in Vietnam and he was never the same again.
Both of the characters Shadrack and Norman Bowker are veterans from a war; Shadrack from WWI, and Bowker from Vietnam. Both of these men are suffering from a mental illness many soldiers succumb to after their time surviving their country: Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD). Neither of them were treated for it, and because of that they suffered much worse. Shadrack's main symptom of PTSD was hallucinations. Toni Morrison describes how his hands, "began to grow in higgledy-piggledy fashion like Jack's beanstalk all over the tray and the bed" (Morrison 9). These hallucinations cause him to be thrown out of the hospital, so he cannot fully recover ever from his PTSD. Bowker on the other hand, was not wounded in battle. However, his struggle with Survivor's guilt after witnessing his friend die, as well as his other war experiences, he could not adjust back to normal life. His life had moved on without him, "the town seemed remote somehow. Sally was married and Max was drowned and his father was at home watching baseball on national TV" (O'Brien 138). Neither Shadrack nor Norman had anyone close to talk to, so they had very little hope of ever fully recovering from their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In part because they still suffered from PTSD, both men found it nearly impossible to blend back into everyday life. Shadrack's "drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous"(Morrison 15) behavior bothered many people in the town of Medallion. The people of the town were afraid of Shadrack because; "they knew Shadrack was crazy but that did not mean that he didn't have any sense or, even more important, that he had no power...he caused panic on the first, or Charter, National Suicide Day" (Morrison 14-15). In The Things They Carried, Bowker doesn't cause any panic in his hometown, but he is looked upon as an ignorant old fool by many of the younger residents. When he went to the resturant "Mama Burger"(O'Brien 151), and tried to place his order, the waitress snapped at him, "'You blind?' she said. She put out her hand and tapped an intercom attacted to a steel post. 'Punch the button and place your order. All I do is carry the dumb trays'"(O'Brien 151). These two men who bravely fought for our country should have been respected upon their return, but because of their PTSD, they were deemed outcasts of society.
Both Tim O'Brien and Toni Morrison effectly show how many soldiers suffer from PTSD, and have to live with it for the rest of their lives. Norman Bowker knew that if he expressed his feelings he would feel better, however he did not know who to tell his story to or how to explain it. His frustrations show in Tim's writing; "he wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be" (O'Brien 153). Shadrack's inability to recover fully from PTSD is in part because he had no one he could confide in and partly because he was not given enough time in the hospital ward to rest. In both Sula and The Things They Carried, it is shown how even when soldiers survive the war, a peice of them dies on the battlefield, and they are incapable to cope with reality once they are thrown back into society.
In Toni Morrison's Sula, she writes about the character Shadrack. Shadrack went to war in December of 1917, "a young man of hardly twenty, his head full of nothing and his mouth recalling the taste of lipstick" (Morrison 7). While Shadrack was in war, "he expected to be terrified or exhilarated - to feel something very strong. In fact, he felt only the bite of a nail in his boot" (Morrison 7-8). Eventually Shadrack's experience in war led him to an unknown injury, sending him home to a hospital, "when Shadrack opened his eyes he was propped up in a small bed. Before on a tray was a large tin plate divided into three triangles" (Morrison 8). Because of his violent tendancies, Shadrack was released from the hospital long before he should have been. Once he pulled himself together a little bit, he instituted National Suicide Day, hoping that, "if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free" (Morrison 14). After returning from the war, he lived out his days, "in a shack on the riverbank that had once belonged to his grandfather long time dead. On Tuesday and Friday he sold the fish he had caught that morning, the rest of the week he was drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous" (Morrison 15). Needless to say, Shadrack had changed immensly from the man he was before he went to serve his country.
In Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, he shows the struggles of character Norman Bowker once he returns from the Vietnam war. Bowker's most traumatizing experience in war was when his friend, Kiowa, died right next to him. That experience is something Bowker has to "carry" the rest of his life. He survived the war, but when he came back he was not the same; "the war was over and there was no place in particular to go" (O'Brien 137). He wanted his story to be told, maybe in hopes of "objectifying his own experience" (O'Brien 158). Norman writes out his story for Tim O'Brien to write. It is a hard task for Tim to do, and by the time he was able to figure out how to write the story, it was too late. O'Brien got a letter "In August of 1978 [Bowker's] mother sent me a brief note explaining what had happened...he used a jump rope; his friends found him hanging from a water pipe. There was no suicide note" (O'Brien 160). Norman Bowker is Tim's example of a man who physically survived the war, but a part of him still died over in Vietnam and he was never the same again.
Both of the characters Shadrack and Norman Bowker are veterans from a war; Shadrack from WWI, and Bowker from Vietnam. Both of these men are suffering from a mental illness many soldiers succumb to after their time surviving their country: Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder (PTSD). Neither of them were treated for it, and because of that they suffered much worse. Shadrack's main symptom of PTSD was hallucinations. Toni Morrison describes how his hands, "began to grow in higgledy-piggledy fashion like Jack's beanstalk all over the tray and the bed" (Morrison 9). These hallucinations cause him to be thrown out of the hospital, so he cannot fully recover ever from his PTSD. Bowker on the other hand, was not wounded in battle. However, his struggle with Survivor's guilt after witnessing his friend die, as well as his other war experiences, he could not adjust back to normal life. His life had moved on without him, "the town seemed remote somehow. Sally was married and Max was drowned and his father was at home watching baseball on national TV" (O'Brien 138). Neither Shadrack nor Norman had anyone close to talk to, so they had very little hope of ever fully recovering from their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
In part because they still suffered from PTSD, both men found it nearly impossible to blend back into everyday life. Shadrack's "drunk, loud, obscene, funny and outrageous"(Morrison 15) behavior bothered many people in the town of Medallion. The people of the town were afraid of Shadrack because; "they knew Shadrack was crazy but that did not mean that he didn't have any sense or, even more important, that he had no power...he caused panic on the first, or Charter, National Suicide Day" (Morrison 14-15). In The Things They Carried, Bowker doesn't cause any panic in his hometown, but he is looked upon as an ignorant old fool by many of the younger residents. When he went to the resturant "Mama Burger"(O'Brien 151), and tried to place his order, the waitress snapped at him, "'You blind?' she said. She put out her hand and tapped an intercom attacted to a steel post. 'Punch the button and place your order. All I do is carry the dumb trays'"(O'Brien 151). These two men who bravely fought for our country should have been respected upon their return, but because of their PTSD, they were deemed outcasts of society.
Both Tim O'Brien and Toni Morrison effectly show how many soldiers suffer from PTSD, and have to live with it for the rest of their lives. Norman Bowker knew that if he expressed his feelings he would feel better, however he did not know who to tell his story to or how to explain it. His frustrations show in Tim's writing; "he wished he could've explained some of this. How he had been braver than he ever thought possible, but how he had not been so brave as he wanted to be" (O'Brien 153). Shadrack's inability to recover fully from PTSD is in part because he had no one he could confide in and partly because he was not given enough time in the hospital ward to rest. In both Sula and The Things They Carried, it is shown how even when soldiers survive the war, a peice of them dies on the battlefield, and they are incapable to cope with reality once they are thrown back into society.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Sula: Reader Response Journal
Toni Morrison's Sula is a novel about the Black community living in the city of Medallion, in an area called the Bottom, which ironically is a giant hill. Why did Morrison place them on a giant hill in the middle of a white community? To show that the African American community was singled out? The story starts with the character Shadrack, who just got home from WWI, and who is seriously suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He ends up living in isolation, in a run-down shack near the river. He created his own crazy holiday, and "except for World War II, nothing ever interfered with the celebration of Nation Suicide Day. It had taken place every January third since 1920, although Shadrack, its founder, was for many years the only celebrant" (1). What? I don't understand why he made up a holiday called National Suicide Day. Is it foreshadowing that he will kill himself? Anyways the novel Sula primarily focuses on the lives of two young girls, Sula and Nel, whom despite the fact that they were best friends, lived very different lives.
Sula grew up in a very large house that was constantly full of many people. Sula had a very unique look; "Sula was a heavy brown with large quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose" (52). What significance is this birthmark on her eye, does it matter that it's shaped like a rose? Her grandmother, Eva first built their house and made it bigger as her family grew; she took in many couples of newlyweds, orphans who became known as the "Deweys"(38), brothers, sisters, cousins, her children, and a couple random people all lived in the house. So Sula grew up without a lot of privacy, living in a house where there was always someone around. Sula had no father figure in her life growing up, her grandpa and father had abandoned their wives. Could that have an impact on how she grows up? Because her mom had no husband, and slept around with many men Sula's attitude towards sex was, "that sex was pleasant and frequent but otherwise unremarkable" (44). Does this attitude shape how she acts the rest of her life?
Nel was raised by her mother Helene Wright. I thought it was really interesting how Nel was raised in a similar way to white women who were supposed to grow up to be the perfect wives; "Under Helene's hand the girl became obidient and polite. Any enhusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (18). I could tell Helene's strict parenting comes from her mother, when she has Nel meet her grandmother. I was confused when Nel's grandma asked her, "'Comment t'appelle?' 'She doesn't talk Creole.' 'Then you ask her.' 'She wants to know your name, honey.' 'With her head pressed into her mother's heavy brown dress, Nel told her and then asked, 'what's yours?' 'Mine's Rochelle'" (26). Why do they bring up Creole, and what language is it anyways? It seems sort of like French, but i'm not sure. And I found it weird that this is the only time they bring it up.
This book had a lot of death throughout it. The first one was probably the most unexpected; Eva had hopped downstairs one night and entered her son Plum's room. I don't know what was going through her mind or what compelled her to do this but "Eva stepped back from the bed and let the crutches rest under her arms. She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the keosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight" (47). Why does she kill her son, just because he's a wash-out after coming back from the war? Another death in the story that is confusing is that of the little boy named Chicken Little. Sula and Nel were just playing around when he showed up. They played with him for awhile, until Sula swung him around in a circle, and he was laughing and having a good time. He slipped out of Sula's grip and fell into the water. "When he slipped from her hands and sailed away out over the water they could still hear his bubbly laughter" (60-61). He then drowned from being in the water. What I don't understand is why Sula and Nel did nothing to save the boy; if anything they just stood and watched him drown. Speaking of a time when Sula did nothing, She also just stood and watched when her mother caught fire on accident and burnt to death. Eva, who claimed to have never loved her daughter Hannah, risked her life jumping out her fourth story window and almost killing herself to save her daughter.
The other aspect of this book that I found strange was the references to sex. Sula's mother Hannah had sex with many many men, so Sula did the same when she grew up. She even slept with Nel's husband Jude. The book talks a lot about whores, and what they do and how they act. Why such an emphasis on sex? I think the scene where Nel and Sula do some very weird things together. Are they turning things in nature into sex? That's really weird since they are only like twelve years old. Morrison describes the "sex" scene very vividly; "but soon she grew impatient and poked her twig rhymically and intensely into the earth, making a small neat hole that grew deeper and wider with the least manipulation of her twig" (58). Why does she go into this detail on the little girl's interpretation of sex? This part was kind of sick and confusing to me. At the end they fill their holes up with things, "each of them looked around for more debris to throw into the hold: paper, bits of glass, buts of cigarettes, until all of the small defiling things they could find where collected there. Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass" (59). What is this supposed to mean? Is it symbolic? I thought that maybe it represented all the junk the put into their lives just to feel like they've filled their life. I think that it is sad that Morrison writes it to show the girls feeling like that at such a young age. Could that be what warps Sula later in her life?
As the book progresses, Nel gets married and Sula leaves town. Why did she leave at a time of her best friend's happiest moment? Was she jealous? Sula then comes back ten years later seemingly rich, and with a terrible new attitude. She sleeps with Nel's husband Jude, ruining their relationship and throwing Nel's life into turmoil. How could she do that to her best friend, doesn't she care at all anymore? She sleeps around with many men just like her mother did, only Sula seems to do it in an even more degrating way. She even puts her grandmother, Eva, into a old folk's home when she doesn't need to be in one just yet. Altogether, the entire town dislikes this "new" Sula and she basically lives in isolation in Eva's old room, her only real romance was with a character named Ajax. When he leaves her and she finds out his actual name was, "Albert Jacks? His name was Albert Jacks? A. Jacks. She had thought it was Ajax. All those years" (135). Sula is torn apart because the only man she ever really loved left her and she realized she never even truely knew who he was. Sula dies one night after a nightmare she had many times where she was engulfed with powder. After her death the town feels grateful at first, but then they feel something like an emptiness once she's gone, "the tension was gone and so was the reason for the effort they had made. Without her mockery, affection for others sank into flaccid disrepair" (153).
The book ends with Shadrack marching out one last time for National Suicide Day, only this time his half-hearted attempt makes the whole town join in, and as they march to the tunnel that was supposed to be built the citizens tear it down and cause a cave-in, which kills many of the characters in the book.
I thought that Toni Morrison's Sula was a very different book. I didn't really care for the book. It was a very dense book to read and I felt that many of the descriptions and added words just distracted the reader from the main part of the book. The plot was hard for me to find and follow, and I was confused most of the time. A good third of the time I spent reading the book was going back and re-reading the section I just read trying to figure out what it meant or why it was in the book at all.
Sula grew up in a very large house that was constantly full of many people. Sula had a very unique look; "Sula was a heavy brown with large quiet eyes, one of which featured a birthmark that spread from the middle of the lid toward the eyebrow, shaped something like a stemmed rose" (52). What significance is this birthmark on her eye, does it matter that it's shaped like a rose? Her grandmother, Eva first built their house and made it bigger as her family grew; she took in many couples of newlyweds, orphans who became known as the "Deweys"(38), brothers, sisters, cousins, her children, and a couple random people all lived in the house. So Sula grew up without a lot of privacy, living in a house where there was always someone around. Sula had no father figure in her life growing up, her grandpa and father had abandoned their wives. Could that have an impact on how she grows up? Because her mom had no husband, and slept around with many men Sula's attitude towards sex was, "that sex was pleasant and frequent but otherwise unremarkable" (44). Does this attitude shape how she acts the rest of her life?
Nel was raised by her mother Helene Wright. I thought it was really interesting how Nel was raised in a similar way to white women who were supposed to grow up to be the perfect wives; "Under Helene's hand the girl became obidient and polite. Any enhusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (18). I could tell Helene's strict parenting comes from her mother, when she has Nel meet her grandmother. I was confused when Nel's grandma asked her, "'Comment t'appelle?' 'She doesn't talk Creole.' 'Then you ask her.' 'She wants to know your name, honey.' 'With her head pressed into her mother's heavy brown dress, Nel told her and then asked, 'what's yours?' 'Mine's Rochelle'" (26). Why do they bring up Creole, and what language is it anyways? It seems sort of like French, but i'm not sure. And I found it weird that this is the only time they bring it up.
This book had a lot of death throughout it. The first one was probably the most unexpected; Eva had hopped downstairs one night and entered her son Plum's room. I don't know what was going through her mind or what compelled her to do this but "Eva stepped back from the bed and let the crutches rest under her arms. She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the keosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight" (47). Why does she kill her son, just because he's a wash-out after coming back from the war? Another death in the story that is confusing is that of the little boy named Chicken Little. Sula and Nel were just playing around when he showed up. They played with him for awhile, until Sula swung him around in a circle, and he was laughing and having a good time. He slipped out of Sula's grip and fell into the water. "When he slipped from her hands and sailed away out over the water they could still hear his bubbly laughter" (60-61). He then drowned from being in the water. What I don't understand is why Sula and Nel did nothing to save the boy; if anything they just stood and watched him drown. Speaking of a time when Sula did nothing, She also just stood and watched when her mother caught fire on accident and burnt to death. Eva, who claimed to have never loved her daughter Hannah, risked her life jumping out her fourth story window and almost killing herself to save her daughter.
The other aspect of this book that I found strange was the references to sex. Sula's mother Hannah had sex with many many men, so Sula did the same when she grew up. She even slept with Nel's husband Jude. The book talks a lot about whores, and what they do and how they act. Why such an emphasis on sex? I think the scene where Nel and Sula do some very weird things together. Are they turning things in nature into sex? That's really weird since they are only like twelve years old. Morrison describes the "sex" scene very vividly; "but soon she grew impatient and poked her twig rhymically and intensely into the earth, making a small neat hole that grew deeper and wider with the least manipulation of her twig" (58). Why does she go into this detail on the little girl's interpretation of sex? This part was kind of sick and confusing to me. At the end they fill their holes up with things, "each of them looked around for more debris to throw into the hold: paper, bits of glass, buts of cigarettes, until all of the small defiling things they could find where collected there. Carefully they replaced the soil and covered the entire grave with uprooted grass" (59). What is this supposed to mean? Is it symbolic? I thought that maybe it represented all the junk the put into their lives just to feel like they've filled their life. I think that it is sad that Morrison writes it to show the girls feeling like that at such a young age. Could that be what warps Sula later in her life?
As the book progresses, Nel gets married and Sula leaves town. Why did she leave at a time of her best friend's happiest moment? Was she jealous? Sula then comes back ten years later seemingly rich, and with a terrible new attitude. She sleeps with Nel's husband Jude, ruining their relationship and throwing Nel's life into turmoil. How could she do that to her best friend, doesn't she care at all anymore? She sleeps around with many men just like her mother did, only Sula seems to do it in an even more degrating way. She even puts her grandmother, Eva, into a old folk's home when she doesn't need to be in one just yet. Altogether, the entire town dislikes this "new" Sula and she basically lives in isolation in Eva's old room, her only real romance was with a character named Ajax. When he leaves her and she finds out his actual name was, "Albert Jacks? His name was Albert Jacks? A. Jacks. She had thought it was Ajax. All those years" (135). Sula is torn apart because the only man she ever really loved left her and she realized she never even truely knew who he was. Sula dies one night after a nightmare she had many times where she was engulfed with powder. After her death the town feels grateful at first, but then they feel something like an emptiness once she's gone, "the tension was gone and so was the reason for the effort they had made. Without her mockery, affection for others sank into flaccid disrepair" (153).
The book ends with Shadrack marching out one last time for National Suicide Day, only this time his half-hearted attempt makes the whole town join in, and as they march to the tunnel that was supposed to be built the citizens tear it down and cause a cave-in, which kills many of the characters in the book.
I thought that Toni Morrison's Sula was a very different book. I didn't really care for the book. It was a very dense book to read and I felt that many of the descriptions and added words just distracted the reader from the main part of the book. The plot was hard for me to find and follow, and I was confused most of the time. A good third of the time I spent reading the book was going back and re-reading the section I just read trying to figure out what it meant or why it was in the book at all.
Green Grass, Running Water: Close Analysis Journal
A marriage is a sacred event between a man and a women who have chosen to spend the rest of their lives together. It is something that is supposed to last a lifetime, "till death do us part," as mentioned in the most common wedding vows. It is a union of two people, bringing their families and cultures closer together. This is especially important in multi-cultural relationships, the joining of cultures would lead to a wider understanding of each other and a lessening of racial and prejudiced thoughts. In Thomas King's Green Grass, Running Water, instead of understanding and happiness, every relationship between a Native American and a white person leads to unhappiness.
The biggest factor in Green Grass, Running Water that shows King's negative attitude towards mixed marriages is the failure of all relationships that involve whites and Native Americans. Alberta Frank's marriage to the white man named Bob. They first met going to school together at the university, at first their relation ship went very well; after all, "They were married that same year" (91). But as time went on Bob wanted Alberta to drop out of school and work so that he could finish his schooling and once he "had established himself in a good government position," Alberta could go back to university (91). Alberta's reluctance to this idea, as well as Bob's insulting her Indian culture, "you don't want to spend the rest of your life in a tepee, do you?" (92), pushed them towards a divorce the next year. Alberta's parents also had troubles with their relationship; her father Amos was a drunk who beat her mother, Ada, repeatedly. One day Alberta witnessed Amos coming home drunk and was cursing out Ada, "come out here and help me, you old cow" (95). He passed out screaming in the front yard with his pants down. Ada left him out there on the porch with a blanket; the next day Amos was gone. His truck was drove into the lake and Amos had left his wife and family for good.
Another example of a marriage that failed because of a culture clash is Latisha's. She married a man named George Morningstar. From the very beginning, "Latisha had even liked his name. It sounded slightly Indian, though George was American, from a small town in Michigan" (143). When they first met George was a polite man who was curious about Indian culture and always listened intently to Latisha, "It was his one great quality. He made you believe that he was listening, made you believe that he was interested" (145). They spent all their time together and were very happy. Even once they were married it seemed normal and happy at first. But as time went on, George started to become more opinionated and grew distant from Latisha. He stopped listening to her and would just talk and talk about how Americans were so far superior to Canadians. They had their first child, Christian. He had been an only child when they deicided to have more children, in hopes of saving their marriage. They next two children, "Benjamin and Elizabeth were two year apart. Elizabeth had been a suprise. The divorce was not" (213). Latisha had gotten sick of George constantly switching jobs and just acting stupid. Her opinion of him now was that, "George was dull and he was stupid, bone-deep stupid, more stupid than Latisha could ever have guessed whites could be stupid" (213). George had started beating Latisha, for absolutely no reason at all. He then decided to stop working altogether and take care of the kids. Their relationship got worse and worse until, "The next week George left. Just left" (275). King writes another marriage that started happy but because of culture differences ended very badly and left everyone unhappy.
One relationship that actually would have worked out wonderfully Tom King writes it to end in tradgety. Eli Stands Alone had met a wonderful white woman named Karen. She was very open-minded towards his Native American culture, and very interested in learning about it. While Eli had taught her about Indians, Karen had given him book after book to read when he had the time. After a length of time where the two of them got along, they had decided to move in together. They lived at Karen's house since she had more money. After living together for two years, Eli met Karen's parents. They got along very well and had no problem with Eli being Indian. After that went so well, Karen wanted to meet Eli's family, and so he took her to the Sun Dance. Karen was excited to go, "'the Sun Dance!' said Karen. 'I didn't even know you guys still practiced that'" (225). They go to the Sun Dance and Karen has a great time. She was excited to go again, "Karen was full of enthusiasm and plans. They would go back next year. Early. Before the people put up the tepees. They would stay for the entire time, eat in the camp, sleep in the camp. Karen would help Eli's mother and sister" (287). Eli kept putting back going again to the Sun Dance, and Karen was afraid, "'Eli,' Karen asked, 'you're not embarassed or something like that?'' (291). After awhile Karen had stopped bugging Eli about the Sun Dance, but then she got really sick. At first they thought she was pregnant, but actually she was near death from sickness. When she finally was getting better from the sickness, and they knew she'd survive it, Eli and her started planning the rest of their lives together. Then one day, after they had planned on going to the Sun Dance again that summer, they were driving around in their car; "Eli saw the car before Karen did, a dark flash of purple and black, glistening as it came, plunging through the intersection" (382). The driver of that car was drunk and his recklessness cost Karen her life. The fact that King killed Karen, who was in the only multi-cultural relationship in the book that would have been successful, really proves how he doesn't want the cultures to succeed in mixing with each other.
In Tom King's novel, marriage itself is regarded with negative connotation. At the Dead Dog Cafe, a customer asks Latisha, "'Are you married?' asked Jeanette. 'No.' 'Very wise,' said Jeanette" (143). She pushes the question further later while talking to Latisha, "'but you must have been married,' said Jeanette. 'Every woman makes that mistake at least once" (143). In Alberta's case, she has two men in her life, whom she must act carefully around since she says that, "men wanted to be married" (46). And Alberta didn't want that commitment again. King is calling marriage in general a "mistake" throughout the novel.
Green Grass, Running Water, a satire of white culture as well as Christianity, really shows Thomas King's attitude towards the mixing of culture. With all the of the symbolic marriages failing and/or ending in unhappiness, King must feel a sort of contempt towards those who try to force a cultural understanding between white Americans and Native Americans. His writing reflects this in the way that every marriage or relationship with mixed couples ends up in disaster.
The biggest factor in Green Grass, Running Water that shows King's negative attitude towards mixed marriages is the failure of all relationships that involve whites and Native Americans. Alberta Frank's marriage to the white man named Bob. They first met going to school together at the university, at first their relation ship went very well; after all, "They were married that same year" (91). But as time went on Bob wanted Alberta to drop out of school and work so that he could finish his schooling and once he "had established himself in a good government position," Alberta could go back to university (91). Alberta's reluctance to this idea, as well as Bob's insulting her Indian culture, "you don't want to spend the rest of your life in a tepee, do you?" (92), pushed them towards a divorce the next year. Alberta's parents also had troubles with their relationship; her father Amos was a drunk who beat her mother, Ada, repeatedly. One day Alberta witnessed Amos coming home drunk and was cursing out Ada, "come out here and help me, you old cow" (95). He passed out screaming in the front yard with his pants down. Ada left him out there on the porch with a blanket; the next day Amos was gone. His truck was drove into the lake and Amos had left his wife and family for good.
Another example of a marriage that failed because of a culture clash is Latisha's. She married a man named George Morningstar. From the very beginning, "Latisha had even liked his name. It sounded slightly Indian, though George was American, from a small town in Michigan" (143). When they first met George was a polite man who was curious about Indian culture and always listened intently to Latisha, "It was his one great quality. He made you believe that he was listening, made you believe that he was interested" (145). They spent all their time together and were very happy. Even once they were married it seemed normal and happy at first. But as time went on, George started to become more opinionated and grew distant from Latisha. He stopped listening to her and would just talk and talk about how Americans were so far superior to Canadians. They had their first child, Christian. He had been an only child when they deicided to have more children, in hopes of saving their marriage. They next two children, "Benjamin and Elizabeth were two year apart. Elizabeth had been a suprise. The divorce was not" (213). Latisha had gotten sick of George constantly switching jobs and just acting stupid. Her opinion of him now was that, "George was dull and he was stupid, bone-deep stupid, more stupid than Latisha could ever have guessed whites could be stupid" (213). George had started beating Latisha, for absolutely no reason at all. He then decided to stop working altogether and take care of the kids. Their relationship got worse and worse until, "The next week George left. Just left" (275). King writes another marriage that started happy but because of culture differences ended very badly and left everyone unhappy.
One relationship that actually would have worked out wonderfully Tom King writes it to end in tradgety. Eli Stands Alone had met a wonderful white woman named Karen. She was very open-minded towards his Native American culture, and very interested in learning about it. While Eli had taught her about Indians, Karen had given him book after book to read when he had the time. After a length of time where the two of them got along, they had decided to move in together. They lived at Karen's house since she had more money. After living together for two years, Eli met Karen's parents. They got along very well and had no problem with Eli being Indian. After that went so well, Karen wanted to meet Eli's family, and so he took her to the Sun Dance. Karen was excited to go, "'the Sun Dance!' said Karen. 'I didn't even know you guys still practiced that'" (225). They go to the Sun Dance and Karen has a great time. She was excited to go again, "Karen was full of enthusiasm and plans. They would go back next year. Early. Before the people put up the tepees. They would stay for the entire time, eat in the camp, sleep in the camp. Karen would help Eli's mother and sister" (287). Eli kept putting back going again to the Sun Dance, and Karen was afraid, "'Eli,' Karen asked, 'you're not embarassed or something like that?'' (291). After awhile Karen had stopped bugging Eli about the Sun Dance, but then she got really sick. At first they thought she was pregnant, but actually she was near death from sickness. When she finally was getting better from the sickness, and they knew she'd survive it, Eli and her started planning the rest of their lives together. Then one day, after they had planned on going to the Sun Dance again that summer, they were driving around in their car; "Eli saw the car before Karen did, a dark flash of purple and black, glistening as it came, plunging through the intersection" (382). The driver of that car was drunk and his recklessness cost Karen her life. The fact that King killed Karen, who was in the only multi-cultural relationship in the book that would have been successful, really proves how he doesn't want the cultures to succeed in mixing with each other.
In Tom King's novel, marriage itself is regarded with negative connotation. At the Dead Dog Cafe, a customer asks Latisha, "'Are you married?' asked Jeanette. 'No.' 'Very wise,' said Jeanette" (143). She pushes the question further later while talking to Latisha, "'but you must have been married,' said Jeanette. 'Every woman makes that mistake at least once" (143). In Alberta's case, she has two men in her life, whom she must act carefully around since she says that, "men wanted to be married" (46). And Alberta didn't want that commitment again. King is calling marriage in general a "mistake" throughout the novel.
Green Grass, Running Water, a satire of white culture as well as Christianity, really shows Thomas King's attitude towards the mixing of culture. With all the of the symbolic marriages failing and/or ending in unhappiness, King must feel a sort of contempt towards those who try to force a cultural understanding between white Americans and Native Americans. His writing reflects this in the way that every marriage or relationship with mixed couples ends up in disaster.
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