Absence is an extremely powerful thing. Absence is not a brief silence, nor a moment easily forgotten, nor an inconsequential or inconsequential matter. It’s a feeling of perpetuity, a constant gnawing in the stomach and the back of the mind. The absence is always present. In Toni Morrison's Sula, absence plagues the citizens of the Bottom; there is an absence of love, loyalty and understanding, of essentially everything that binds people together; there is blood and an abandonment of everything else, of everything that matters so much more. Fathers abandon their children, husbands their wives. The mothers stay but leave their children wondering if they were ever truly loved. Friends turn their backs on each other and choose anger, heartbreak, and sorrow over catharsis. It is the lack of pure loyalty and understanding that leads, without exception, to the downfall of every character. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay There is no betrayal so great in its devastation as a parent's betrayal of their child. The people of the Lower consider themselves knowledgeable in matters of evil; they remain resolute in their collective belief that “the presence of evil [is] something that must first be recognized, then dealt with, survived, outwitted, triumphed” (Morrison 118). However, what they fail to recognize, outwit, and defeat is the evil that thrives in their narrow-minded comfort zones. The presence of evil can be detected through the deliberate abandonment of family, an act committed by almost all of Sula's male characters. BoyBoy abandons his wife and children, then returns to visit Eva years later, as if this single act of abandonment hasn't rendered him completely useless. BoyBoy has no loyalty to his wife, and this is true for many of the men in the novel. It represents a larger pattern of behavior: the many husbands who cheat and leave their wives. It is her narcissistic escape that makes Eva who she is, and it is therefore BoyBoy who sets off much of the chain reactions in the novel. If he had stayed, Eva would not have needed to leave her family for 18 months just to provide for her children. Eva fulfills part of her role as a mother in that she provides for her children, giving them food, clothing, and shelter, but she also leaves her daughter with the question, "Mom, is this that you already loved us? » (67). The only time Adams 2Eva's love is truly apparent is when she kills one child and when she fails to save another. It's love and loyalty that Eva feels, but it's a stricter, harsher kind, and in Plum's case, it's a perversion; she shows that she loves him by setting him on fire, so that he may die a death worthy of a man. Eva passes on a perverse sense of loyalty to her granddaughter Sula. The only loyalty Sula feels is to herself and to her best friend Nel. Sula goes so far as to cut off part of her own finger to protect Nel from bullies. This recalls Eva's willingness to lose her leg for her children, and it shows that Nel and Sula are more like family than friends. However, family does not mean a right of passage to sleep with other people's husbands. This is not entirely Sula's fault, as she is taught from a young age "that sex [is] pleasurable and frequent, but otherwise mundane" (44). Even though Sula's love for Nel never wavers, her understanding of loyalty does. Whatever her intentions, whatever their precedent for sharing, Sula hurts Nel, which results in the departure of Nel's husband, Jude.,.