This novel is called Sula, named after the woman who takes the conventions of her small hometown and completely turns them on their head, but the story itself would not be complete without her friend and counterpart who embodies these conventions, Nel. Although overall this is not a very realistic novel, Morrison constructs these two characters realistically from their two very different upbringings. One girl has her imagination stifled and is always surrounded by order and cleanliness, with a mother who is a moral pillar of the community, while the second little girl grows up in a household in constant confusion, with no male role models and a mother who is openly promiscuity. Despite their very different origins, the two girls meet again and form a strong bond of friendship. By introducing the reader to these two friends who ultimately choose opposite paths in their adult lives, Morrison expresses his criticism of people who blindly succumb to societal conventions, revealing them as a shortcoming that can harm a person's humanity. Sula's "evil" actions provide a dialectic for the rest of the people of the Bottom who seem to thrive on conformity. What exactly is evil and why is it dangerous to live a life of conformity like Nel? These are the questions I tend to explore in this article. But first of all, we must understand where these two women come from by investigating the important events of their childhood. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Her grandmother tells Helene Wright that she is ashamed of her prostitute mother, while being raised in religion, "under the mournful eyes of a multicolored Virgin". Mary" (17) and she transferred this strict upbringing to her own daughter Nel, after she moved as far away from her home in New Orleans as possible, to the Bottom. As Helen wanted a polite and obedient daughter, she stifles her imagination, making her vulnerable to the influence of conventions: “The enthusiasms displayed by little Nel were pacified by her mother until she pushed her daughter's imagination underground” (18). In order to oppose or even think about opposing conventions, an individual must have imagination, which will give him the ability to think for himself. Respecting conventions requires no imagination, just joining. the crowd without thinking. Nel is also affected by the train incident, which constitutes a pivotal moment in her life. It is not the growing racism and the presence of segregation on the journey south that deeply affects Nel, but rather the look she sees in the dark. soldiers' faces as his mother smiles at the racist white driver. "It was on that train, heading to Cincinnati, that she decided to always be on guard. She wanted to make sure no man looked at her that way. no midnight stares or mottled flesh "(22) At this point, Nel makes a conscious decision to avoid the look of disapproval at all costs, which means, later in life, that she must follow them. rules of society or suffer this same shame again. Helene had already instilled in the girl a tendency toward conformity by restricting her imagination, and after this incident, Nel herself decides to avoid confrontation, thus completing the education that makes her incapable of resisting conventions. A look at the friend Nel acquires after this trip reveals a completely different situation. The Peace house was a place "...where all kinds of people came in; where newspapers were stacked in the hallway and dirty dishes were left forhours at a time in the sink..."(29); we are far from the order and discipline of the Wright house. Even the physical structure of the house itself is confusing, with rooms and inaccessible doors continually added by Eva, who is the master and demigod of the family, and this confusion and disorder translates directly into the family relationships. Sula's two main role models, who were her mother Hannah and Eva, n. 'never had a stable relationship with a man apart from their respective husbands, who were not there long. Instead, there was a constant flow of strange men in the house, consisting of the daily lovers of. Hannah and the men who visited her Apart from Boyboy, the only man she hates, Eva loves men in general: “It's the masculine love that Eva left to her daughters... The women of the family. Peace simply loved masculinity, for its own sake” (41) When Sula is older, she inevitably falls in line with this behavior. Even though Nel's mother never taught her about sex, Hannah "sexed round"(42) and Sula drew her own conclusions about it directly from her mother's behavior: "Seeing (Hannah) enter so easily into the pantry and come out looking the same as she did. did when she entered, but happier, taught Sula that sex was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise mundane... So she watched her mother's face and the men's faces when they opened the pantry door and made his own decision. "(44)Sex for Sula has nothing to do with love or even friendship; it is nothing more than an act that two people of the opposite sex engage in to make each other happy. What more simple while being contrary to all the moral norms of society? The behavior of the young girl as an adult is a reflection of these supposedly immoral lessons that she learned from her mother as a child. Both Nel and Sula, as individuals, were lacking in a certain point of view: Nel was incapable of "thinking outside the box" without Sula, while Sula herself was incapable of making reasonable decisions that did not. 'were not entirely governed by his emotions without Nel The two halves form a whole. Morrison states that "...they had already known each other in the delirium of their midday dreams" (51). the other that they knew each other before meeting physically. Together, the two friends embark on the path to femininity while still trying to find a place in white America. “Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and all triumph were forbidden to them, they set out. creating something else to be... Daughters of distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers... they found in the gaze of the other the intimacy they were looking for."(52)These two little girls, raised in completely different worlds, manage to find in each other, a compliment to their own personality and a closeness that they could not save from their differently inadequate parents2E. They have their first encounter with the idea of ​​evil - the Chicken Little incident While it is Sula who actually lets go of Chicken Little's hand, it is Nel who taunts him to begin with, dragging him into it. the interaction that results in his death The two men inadvertently work together to cause the boy's disappearance, and the first thing Nel says after he disappears under calm water, when one would expect that. she cries out in grief, even disbelief, is: “Someone saw” (61) Later, in After the Funeral, Nel's sense of guilt becomes even more apparent: “Even if she knew.that she had “done nothing”, she felt condemned and hung on the bench. » (65) She is not concerned about Chicken Little's loss, only the idea that she is guilty of an evil act bothers her. On the contrary, “Sula simply cried” (65), which illustrates her remorse over the little boy’s death. Ironically, she is the young girl who will later be seen as evil by her community who mourns the loss of life and her "moral" friend who only cares about herself. This blurring of the line between good and evil only becomes evident to Nel forty-three years later, when Eva broaches the subject and confuses her with Sula. After Nel protests to Eva that it was Sula and not her who killed the boy, Eva responds: "You. Sula. What's the difference? You were there. You watched, didn't you "(168) and even goes so far as to say: "All the same. You two. There was never any difference between you."(169) After this meeting, Nel consciously remembers "the good feeling that it had. 'she had felt when Chicken's hands had slipped.'(170) This realization makes Nel realize that she is really no different from Sula. in that they are both human, and therefore imperfect, part of this fundamental human imperfection is that we all have a dark side, whether we want to admit it or not, Nel saw Chicken Little become a part of the river with the same. an unhealthy fascination that turns heads at the scene of an accident or secretly hopes for a car accident during a race. To understand this secret side of ourselves, we must first be able to recognize its presence, which the people around us do. The Bottoms, including Nel before her confrontation with Eva, are incapable of doing so. Since they cannot understand the side of themselves that the woman Sula comes to represent, the people of Bottom avoid her and label her as evil. The community of the Bottom, as Morrison continually points out, recognizes the fact that evil is an inevitable part of life, they are too quick to label anyone who deviates from their accepted conventions as evil. They know that “(God) was not the three-faced God they sang about. They knew very well that He had a fourth and that the fourth explained Sula” (118), but the flaw in this logic is the fact that the people do not apply it to themselves and, therefore, do not recognize not the evils inherent in its conformism. Sula simply enacts the life that the rest of the community desires in their secret subconscious. “She lived her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anyone unless their pleasure pleased her.” (118) This type of life may seem entirely selfish, and indeed it is, but it is also very honest. If Nel and his acolytes would take a true and honest look at their own hopes and desires, then they would realize that selfishness does not necessarily mean a complete rejection of others. By loving someone, a person likes that other person to bring out the best in them, which is essentially a selfish end, but not a bad one. Unfortunately, societal conventions give the word very negative connotations, making a person like Sula, who is openly selfish, an object of dissension and harm. She becomes an outcast because she admits what no one else will; that above all, a person must live their life for themselves and, in turn, this honesty will leave them open and more able to share their self-love with others. Nel and Sula's childhood friendship is an example of selfish love that was beneficial to both parties. During this period, the two girls were able,.