Shadrack on sula

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Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula Author: K. Zauditu-Selassie Date: 2009 From: African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison Publisher: UP of Florida Place of Publication: Gainesville Document Type: Critical essay Length: 9,389 words

Full Text:  [(essay date 2009) In the following essay, Zauditu-Selassie studies the quest motif in Sula in terms of a psychological landscape, in which Sula’s struggle for self-definition is representative of a typical quest involving physical challenges faced by the protagonist. According to Zauditu-Selassie, Sula fails in her quest because she does not recognize the significance of community in Morrison’s works, where the survival of the authentic African communal experience is an essential component of the individual search for meaning.]

I have always been just me, with no frame of reference to anything beyond myself.Bessie Head

Following the success of Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, her second novel, Sula (1974) received considerable critical attention with approaches varying from dialogues concerning the nature of good and evil to examinations of motherhood.1 However, the quest motif remains a major critical feature that begs for exploration. The idea of the quest, an essential component inherited from the epic tradition, makes a smooth transition in Morrison’s novels.2 Morrison locates Sula’s heroic quest to a psychological mindscape defined by interiority and revises male versions of the heroic journey usually defined by slayings, rescues, and a valiant return to the homeland laden with treasures. Although Sula does venture away from the community, there is little mention of what has occurred on her journey because her heroic action is acted out within the frame of community (Birenbaum 55).3

It is in the community where Sula’s psyche, spirit, and soul get explored. Karen Stein proposes that the shift in focus by African American women is a conscious attempt to subvert the patriarchal guises of male heroes, creating a new definition of heroism that “encompasses the lives of Black women” (146). One of these redefinitions of heroism is that heroes are not always successful. This is evident in Sula where Morrison attributes Sula’s failed quest to her detachment from community responsibility, her indifference to guidance offered by archetypal characters, and her excommunication from ancestral forces. Sula’s insistence on rugged individualism, an American cultural trait that conflicts with the African communal emphasis, turns the quest into a contest of will and dooms her from the onset. I contend that the thwarted quest that Morrison presents empowers the reader to reverse the heroic character’s actions and subsequently obtain a sense of fulfillment and an awareness of African spiritual and cultural values by default.

In this chapter, I chronicle the eponymous character’s shortcomings by examining her negligence of these African values. In keeping with Morrison’s unyielding cultural perspective, I examine archetypes and symbols that mark Sula’s definitions as well as her rejection of the living ancestor’s presence and her departure from an understanding of African worldview. In order to fully comprehend the implications of Sula’s self-centered actions, it is essential first to examine the community from which she deviates, the archetypal guide whom she fails to heed, and the ancestor whom she rejects.

One of Toni Morrison’s recurring literary concerns is the survival of an authentic African American community. From a traditional perspective, Marcel Maus explains that community is the main agent of meaning and that the role of the individual is to act out the life of the clan (5). The importance of the community is evident in the prominence that it is given within the structure of the narrative. Considering the community before the formal introduction of the title character attests to the significance of community as one of the concentric circles that define the individual’s existence. From an African perspective, individuals are born into communities and derive their identities from these communities, which inscribe their sense of values, notions of cultural decorum, and ideas of accountability. At once, the name of the town and a metaphor for the foundation of the ancestors on which healthy community is situated, the Bottom functions as a reconfigured African village. Throughout the novel the community functions as a barometer that gauges the moral actions of Sula, as well as other characters.

The novel begins by introducing that community: “In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their

roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood” (Sula 4). Morrison’s invocation in the opening sentence indicates the endurance of spiritual practices in this community. Giving the readers a glimpse of the end, this ordering of story elements anachronistic to the Western mind but coherent within an African model of time, the narrator alerts readers that something catastrophic has occurred to warrant this destruction and prepares them for a series of flashbacks.4 Along with African notions of temporality, the narrator advances the idea that members of this community participated in working roots, since both of these plants are used by spiritual adepts in the practice of ritual and the making of minkisi, or spiritual packets.5

Following the introductory statement is a history of the origins of the town. Then the narrator describes the types of places in the “used-to-be-town.” There is the Time and a Half Pool Hall, Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology, and Reba’s Grill. Finally, the types of people who inhabit the community are portrayed: men who wore “long tan shoes,” women who had “Nu Nile lathered into their hair,” a woman who cooks “in her hat because she couldn’t remember the ingredients without it,” and people who do the “cakewalk,” sing, and laugh easily” (3-4). These descriptions sufficiently define this as an African American community whose mundane façades hint at the most extraordinary inner worlds. The inclusion of the Time and a Half Pool Hall as a place of significance to the neighborhood invites the reader to conjure up familiar scenes of African American men participating in the oral tradition of “big lies” and “signifying,” along with accompanying recollections of male-specific gathering places, like barber shops and lodge halls that help define the social realm of men in the African American tradition. In a similar way, Irene’s Palace of Cosmetology locates the women in a particular domain designated as a place for the exchange of gossip, the offering of advice, and ritual grooming similar to the kitchens and basements in African American homes. Moreover, the inclusion of an eccentric character who needs a hat to generate memory provides a locale for the discussion of things of the spirit that may not make sense outside the cultural confines of this neighborhood.

Having introduced the community, Morrison then narrows the focus to a consideration of one individual. Shadrack who is shell- shocked from his experiences with the horror of World War I, is one of the village’s eccentrics with wild eyes and “long matted hair” (15).6 One of Morrison’s conventional river characters similar to Stamp Paid in Beloved, but just a little stranger, Shadrack dared to walk about with his penis out, pee in front of ladies and girl-children, curse white people and get away with it, drink in the road from the mouth of the bottle, and shout and shake in the streets. He also resembles the peculiar Soaphead Church in The Bluest Eye, whose business was to “Overcome Spells, Bad Luck and Evil Influences” (137), and he prefigures Robert Smith, the insurance agent who in Song of Solomon jumps off the roof of Mercy Hospital in an attempt to fly. He has similarities as well to Son in Tar Baby, whose overpowering hair, which was “wild, aggressive, vicious hair that needed to be put to jail,” matched his uncontrollable passion (113).7

Shadrack was not always this way, but as the story goes, because of his inability to cope with the horrors of war, he ties “the loose cords in his mind” and returns to a faraway time. This excursion through memory is an ancestral flight that takes him “somewhere” where he collects the cultural information needed to reintegrate his shattered psyche. The omniscient narrator reports what Shadrack finds while in this trancelike state, which consists of “more than a year, only eight days of which he fully recollected” (11). During one of these eight days he sees a river and hears someone “speaking softly just outside the door” (10). The river symbolically represents memory—in this sense, the memory of venerated ancestors or bakulu in Ki-Kongo language.8 Furthermore, the memory of the river substantiates Shadrack’s identity as a person who has had a spiritual epiphany concerning his role as a river devotee. The soft voices are the whispering of the ancestors, and the door signifies a metaphysical separation between the dimensions of spirit and matter, or what the Ba Kongo call mwela, a portal for the soul that allows access from one dimension to another.

The description of his discharge from the hospital further advances the idea of his being a river initiate, specifically a devotee of Oya, the Òrìsà who controls the wind. His departure from the hospital is distinguished by an accompanying wind that makes the “heads of trees toss” and thoughts of making people disappear with “a good high wind” that would “pull them up and away.” Furthermore, his first steps toward his new life are referred to as taking “the plunge” and his journey is marked by the images of rebirth and severing of his past life, pointing to another connection with Oya, the guardian of death (10-11). Moreover, the enumeration of items that he does not own include intangible items, such as language, source, and past, as well as personal possessions, to emphasize his separation not only from the military but also from the material world—a significant point that confirms his liminality as an initiate. For example, at times the divination performed after initiation prescribes the relinquishing of all former material possessions to mark the transition from an earthly existence to one determined by spirit. Moreover, his un-tethering from physical phenomena confirms his allegiance with Oya the Yoruba Òrìsà who, like Shadrack, is perpetually transitional—without a past, familial ties, or home. This connection with Oya also relates to the ancestor, since the ontological existence of ancestors in the realm of the invisible represents the idea of an absent presence.

After a short journey, beset by problems, Shadrack comes home to Medallion, to his river. As a river priest ordained by the ancestors and enlightened by discoveries made on the journey, he is free to assume his initiate duties unobstructed by considerations of sanctions from the community.9 Estranged from others and living in a shack on the riverbank that had once belonged to his “grandfather long time dead,” he fashions a way to ritually deal with fear and with the ultimate manifestation of dread: the fear of death.10 His formulation of National Suicide Day coheres to the function of the egungun to remind people about the positive value of ancestors and the circle of perpetuity.

Equipped with his ritual implements—bells, a rope, and a song—he reestablishes the idea of collective rituals. Shadrack’s tools reacquaint the people of Medallion with the relevance of ritual in their lives. The bell functions in two important ways. First, it admonishes the townspeople to attend to the spiritual aspects of their lives. Second, the bell spiritually cleans the town of negative influences and restores a sense of balance. In the Yoruba culture, bells are used to communicate with the Òrìsà and to invoke spirit possession. The rope is symbolic of the binding or fastening needed to engender community cohesion. And the song, referred to as a dirge, invites the presence of the deities. By reinstating ritual into the principle of village life, Shadrack binds the people of the community to a set of beliefs that legitimatize their spiritual identities. In the novel, ritual behavior is a manifestation of the will. Ritual is sometimes the only effective manifestation of willful reconciliation of one’s perception of reality. Therefore, as a symbol of will, ritual functions as its expression.

His value as a genuine and contributing member of society is apparent in the way Shadrack is accepted in the community. For example, even though the people consider him to be crazy, they do not summarily dismiss him. His peculiarity “did not mean that he didn’t have any sense, or even more important, that he had no power” (15). Over time, the people fit him into the scheme of their lives. “Once they understood the boundaries and nature of his madness” (15-16), Shadrack’s fusion into the fabric of life is so exhaustive that people in the town begin to record time by references to these rituals. One character comments to another about the onset of labor pains on Suicide Day. Others make plans with respect to the day: “Let’s do it after New Year’s.” “OK, but make sure it ain’t on Suicide Day” (16). In addition, local lore begins to develop around the day. A grandmother reports that her “hens always started laying of double yolks right after Suicide Day.” In this manner, Suicide Day has become a part of community life.

The next significant member of the community that the narrator introduces is Eva Peace, who symbolizes the living ancestral presence who heads an earthy home where there “is a constant stream of boarders” (30; emphasis added). This house “of many rooms,” where dreams coexist with the mundane, is the home of the matriarch Eve—one of the trio of women who are also occupants.11 As an ancestral figure, Eva’s power lies in her will to survive, clearly seen in her decisive actions. When others in similar situations might have given up, by tapping into the power of the will Eva has become a survivor who outlives all of her children. She is like Toni Morrison’s own ancestor, her grandmother, Ardelia, whom Morrison describes as having faith in the magic “that can be wrought by sheer effort of the will” (“A Slow Walk of Trees” [“A Slow Walk of Trees (as Grandmother Would Say), Hopeless (as Grandfather Would Say)”] 152).

Eva Peace also represents the sacrificing mother. Abandoned by her husband and left to provide for three children, when Eva is down to her last three beets, she leaves her nine-month-old son and two daughters and returns eighteen months later “with two crutches, a new black pocketbook, and one leg” (34). Her homecoming is accompanied by rumors that she stuck her leg under the railroad car in order to collect a monthly pension check. That Eva could leave her three children with a neighbor and return more than a year later to find them healthy and cared for attests to the village values that Africans continue to maintain in the Bottom.

Her maternal sacrifices are not limited to this one act of willful behavior. When Eva’s only son, Plum, becomes a drug addict, she sets him ablaze.12 But before she does, she anoints him in kerosene, rocks him, and loves him. This highly ritualized sacrifice is done not out of anger or malice, but out of Eva’s love for him. As Eva pours kerosene over him, the narrator suggests that Eva’s actions are a blessing or a ritual to bring things back into balance. Years later, when Hannah confronts Eva about Plum’s death, Eva explains she did what she considered motherly by releasing him from his pain. Eva rails, “He wanted to crawl back in my womb and well … I ain’t got the room no more even if he could do it” (71).

Although some critics have commented on the incestuous nature of Eva’s statement, I suggest that a mother’s despair, not incest, is her motive. Because of the futility of Plum’s addiction, Eva decides to control the circumstances of his inevitable death consonant with the identity of Oya, who is the guard of the cemetery and as such supervises ingresses and egresses to and from the realm of the dead. Eva demonstrates another act of love when she sees Hannah on fire and leaps out of the second floor to the yard below in an attempt to save her daughter.

In addition to her will to survive and her strong sense of self-sacrifice, Eva is also described as a woman who knows things. The omniscient narrator describes Eva as a woman of two voices: “like two people were talking at the same time, saying the same thing, one a fraction of a second behind the other” (71). This description relates to Eva’s ability to access both realms in the same manner as the two-headed snake doctors, a concept rooted in the African American folkloric tradition. As such, Eva has the ability to traverse and to spiritually negotiate both material and spiritual realms. The lack of synchronicity of her voice suggests her coterminous presence in both realms of existence.

Eva also has the ability to see things thought to be hidden. Toward the end of the novel when Nel Wright goes to visit Eva in the nursing home, Eva tells her that she saw what happened to Chicken Little. Nel is stunned by Eva’s clarity because she has pushed her participation in the event into the deep spaces of memory. Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi credits Eva’s knowledge of this event not to her clairvoyance but to confession. He says, “Apparently Sula makes a confession to Eva to explain her distraught state after Chicken Little’s death and during the funeral” (131). I disagree. Eva is capable of knowing things through dreams and visions. The importance of her character will be made more evident in the following discussion of Sula and the examination of her failure to endure the trials of her quest.

Jane Bakerman attributes Sula’s failed quest to her inability to learn the lesson of true friendship, while others have argued that because of her “evil” nature her quest was doomed (549). Additionally, many critics explain Sula’s failed quest for selfhood, with analyses focusing on her insistence upon experimentation. I argue that the self Sula creates results in the breaking of familial, community, and ancestral circles, all of which are foundational to define a complete individual. Consisting of many constituents besides the individual, the circle includes spirit guides, the ancestors, and the community. The relationship between the narrative elements that deal directly with Sula and those that are peripheral is an expression of the balance that must exist between the individual and the community in order to maintain harmony. Sula’s departure from community responsibility illustrates this rift. She moves away from the harmony dictated by the principles of community and resorts instead to her preoccupation with physical pleasures, the exercise of an intractable will, and blatant disregard for the community’s interests. Left unchecked, Sula’s hedonistic tendencies render her incapable of assuming the social responsibility needed to perpetuate the family and to sustain the community members of the Bottom.

Sula is the granddaughter of a woman who cut off her own leg in order to collect a $23.00-a-month disability check and who also poured kerosene on her only son and lit him on fire because she could not bear to see him destroy himself. Sula is also the daughter of a woman known as the town whore, whom she watched get burned alive. In short, Sula is fashioned out of the composite merging of these two bold women. However, she appears to be motivated by a sense of self or “me-ness” as a counter to the narrow strictures that defined life for a colored girl in the early twentieth century. The limitations, which constrained choices for women at the time

outside maternal roles, help to move Sula into the realm of marginality where she is neither understood nor accepted.

Sula, a self-created woman, invents her own world defined by self-absorption. The female construct of the free or uninhibited self, Sula’s depiction also characterizes Shadrach’s self-construction. The omniscient narrator rationalizes:

Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous.(121)

In Cane, Jean Toomer describes Avey in a similar fashion: I pointed out in lieu of proper channels, her emotions had overflowed into paths that dissipated them. I talked, beautifully I thought, about an art that would be born, an art that would open the way for women the likes of her.(46)

These two mirror statements explain what is needed to make Sula whole. The danger and experimentation begins after Sula overhears a conversation in which her mother says she does not like her. After this experience, Sula is let loose, unmoored, and her lack of centeredness wreaks havoc on those who surround her. Morrison’s depiction of Sula’s individuality and free unrestrained self is not without consequence. Here, Morrison suggests that death occurs when one perforates the circle of responsibility to one’s lineage ancestors and ignores the principles of intermutuality foundational to continuity and community.

Even though Sula is paired with Nel Wright, a best friend later to become foe, this relationship still does not provide the necessary structure to regulate Sula’s actions. The narrator describes them as inseparable with a friendship that is intense and contained. She continues, “In the safe harbor of each other’s company they could afford to abandon the ways of other people” (55). It is only later on in the story that we actually become aware that Toni Morrison has misled us. This friendship is severely limited by Sula’s disproportionate taking of more than what she gives. Nel is the giver who provides Sula with a sense of self that Sula is unable to fathom alone, as she has “no compulsion to verify herself—be consistent with herself” (119).

In a New York Times Magazine interview, Morrison explains Sula’s self-constructed personality stating, “And she had nothing to fall back on: not maleness, not whiteness, not ladyhood, not anything. And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself” (163). This self-centeredness is made clear upon Sula’s return to the Bottom, when her lack of dependency is highlighted against the backdrop of Nel’s world defined solely by responsibilities to husband and children. It is only after seeing Sula after a ten-year absence that her ideal situation begins to unravel. A major irony is that although Sula is unable to define her own selfhood, she “helped others to define themselves” (95). Speaking to Diane Cooper-Clark, Morrison says she “found Sula frightening.” Morrison explains, “Her definition of freedom is to do anything one wishes, and I personally would be frightened by this freedom” (195).

It is important at this juncture to spiritually identify this woman who wants to make herself. Although this question may be answered from many perspectives, the spiritual and cultural approach initiated earlier offers a clear depiction of Sula’s nature. I propose that Sula, one of Toni Morrison’s marked heroines represents the river Òrìsà Oya indicated by her physical description, behavior, and her affinity with the archetypal manifestations of this Òrìsà of the cemetery. There are few physical descriptions of Sula, but the ones given provide insight and confirm her spiritual identification. The first portrait rendered is a physical description of her with a birthmark covering her eye, which was shaped like a “stemmed rose” (57). The eye is Sula’s mark that designates her as one of Morrison’s marked heroes in much the same way as Sethe’s back in Beloved and Pilate’s smooth stomach in Song of Solomon. Sula’s eye is also a type of scarification indicating her unyielding strength and courage, similar to the Yoruba notion of gbere, where a black powder is inserted in incisions to mark identity and status. In another sense, the eye, itself a circle, is symbolic of the many broken circles: the friendship circle between Nel and Sula; between Sula and the circle of community; and between Sula and the family circle represented by the ancestor.

The eye is a fitting symbol for Sula because, like Oya who refuses definition, it defies description as well. Her emblematic eye represents a kind of double sign; it sums up her deviation from the imposed definitions in the eyes of the community and helps to define the character of the perceiver. Teapot’s mother sees Hannah’s ashes symbolic of her own maternal deficiency. Nel’s children see it as a “scary black thing,” which foreshadows the chaos caused by their parent’s separation. Also, Jude sees the mark over her eye as a rattlesnake revealing much about his fears and sexual attraction to her. Shortly after seeing Sula for the first time, Jude’s fears of being dominated by Nel are resolved because he is empowered by his infidelity with Sula to break free from the oppressive bonds of Nel’s dependent love. Of primary significance is Shadrack’s perception of her eye as a “tadpole”: a sure sign of her spiritual nature and connection to him that substantiates her identity as potential spiritual initiate of the river Òrìsà, like himself. For Shadrack, the marked eye (circle) connects her to the ancestors, rivers, and death.

A dominant description of Sula that substantiates her spiritual identity is the physical description of her upon her return to the village of Medallion. Described as a brown woman wearing “a black crepe dress” and “a black felt hat with the veil of net lowered over one eye,” Sula’s appearance is congruous with the description of Oya, the benefactor and mentor of the egungun or masked ancestral spirits who parade through town reminding the villagers of the permanency of life as well as reminding them to attend to their own individual ancestors. Henry Drewal notes that the Odun egungun are “commemorative funeral rites where the living dead appear and are honored through the mediation of the mask” (Drewal, Pemberton, and Abiodun 175). The egungun convey the essence of the ancestors to the living, the relationship of the living to each other, and reflect the nature of social relationships (175). Judith Gleason’s description of the Egungun illuminates the deeper meaning of Sula’s promenade through town. She writes, “The function of the Egungun cult is to bring the Ancestor back to life in masquerade form in order to “legitimate reigning authority”; this is done at the annual festival for the dead (Gleason 70).

The significance of Sula’s black dress is suggested by Gleason’s description of the cloth as a protective gesture of Oya. According to Gleason, the black cloth “tears social reality to shreds. Like a glandular secretion, it touches us at the instinctual level of defense” (50). Sula’s arrival prefigures the social reality to be shred in the community, and the housewives respond to the sign by “throwing buckets of water on their sidewalks” (Sula 91).

Another characteristic that authenticates Sula’s association with Oya is the phenomenon of death. The novel’s prologue and epilogue both refer to death; and death abounds in the novel and serves as the dominant image informing both structure and content. Barbara Christian notes that each death “gives way to a new view of life” (154). Christian’s observation can be explained by Oya’s enigmatic identity, as substantiated by Gleason, who explains: “Oya is a conundrum. She is a double goddess: not here but there, not there but here; on the side of death, on the side of life” (50). This doubling effect can be seen in the symbolic deaths such as the demise of Nel and Sula’s friendship, the dissolution of Nel and Jude’s marriage, the separation between Eva and Sula, and the revised image of Sula at the novel’s end following Eva’s disclosure to Nel. Moreover, there are actual deaths many of which are connected to Sula in significant ways: Hannah and Plum both die by burnings; Chicken Little drowns; Mr. Finley chokes on a chicken bone; and many of the townspeople are killed in a culminating ritual at the end of the novel following Sula’s death.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of death, the circles that recur as a leitmotif and encompass the actual deaths symbolize the permanence of life. The circling serves to unite both the presence of the Òrìsà and the idea of the intransience of life. In the novel, right before Hannah’s death, the circling motif appears when she is preparing green beans for dinner: “She swirled them about with her fingers, poured the water off and repeated the process” (72). In addition to this image of circling, Hannah’s death represents another kind of circle: Eva’s love and Sula’s indifference. Sula is intimated in her mother’s death since she calmly watches her mother’s fire dance “because she was interested” (78). This woman—daughter, town whore, and mother—is dead, and it is left up to the reader to reach a conclusion as to the cause(s) of her death. Again, an analysis of Oya helps to explain Eva and Sula’s possible participation in this deadly alliance. Gleason explains that Oya, as the deity of women who lead “intense, erotic lives,” is the essence of fire in motion represented by one of her major symbols—lightning (291). Hannah’s lightning-swift death by fire occurs immediately after she questions Eva’s love and after Sula overhears her saying that she does not like her. These actions cannot be overlooked as contributing factors to her demise.

The third ritualized death in the novel—the death of Chicken Little—illustrates Sula’s spiritual vocation. Prior to Chicken Little’s death, Sula is at an emotional crossroads in her life signified by both puberty and her indifferent mother’s lack of maternal affection. She heads down to the river accompanied by her “dark thoughts” (57). Toni Morrison carefully crafts the scene leading up to Chicken Little’s death with subtle prose that prepares the reader for the ritual sacrifice. In the preparatory stage of the ritual, before the river is fed, Elegba is invoked as customary in his capacity as a mediator.13 His invocation is manifested by the activity engaged in by Sula and Nel immediately prior to Chicken Little’s appearance, which consists of feeding the earth a variety of organic materials: “rooted grass, “stripped twigs,” “cigarette butts” (58-59). After this ritual of stripping symbolic of the preparatory activities to prepare osain (herbal fluids) and the feeding of the hole, Sula sees Chicken Little “coming up from the lower bank of the river” and coaxes him to climb the tree with her, and they look out over the “far side of the river” (59).14 This sacrificial feeding of the bird to Oya at the river also propitiates the ancestors located at the bottom of the river in the realm of the bakulu. Additionally, the circular ripples in the river and Chicken Little’s having been swung in circles replicate the concentric circles of the living and the dead and the symbiotic relationship and exchange between the two realms from an African spiritual perspective.

Having performed the ritual intentionally or not, Sula is forever changed and heads deliberately toward her own beginning/end. Moreover, entering Shadrack’s house binds her to him as she is the only person who has ever crossed his threshold. Additionally, the purple belt she leaves behind is also emblematic of that connection. Later in the novel, Shadrack would confirm that connection speaking his one-word mantra “always” when he encounters her in the street. However, Sula does not heed his exhortation and heads in another direction re-routing her destiny.

As dramatic as the other deaths are, Sula’s death and the circumstances that prefigure it point to its primary significance in the novel. The attending details create a surreal atmosphere:

It would be here, only here, held by this blind window high above the elm tree, that she might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, just missing the dark walls, down, down until she met a rain scent and would know the water was near, and she would curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry her, and wash her tired flesh always. Always.(149)

“Always,” this word spoken on her deathbed recalls the guidance given her by Shadrack concerning the permanence of life. Moreover the water imagery substantiates the locus of bakulu or ancestral realties in the Kongo tradition and reiterates the notion of perpetuity. Finally, the words spoken after her “death”—“Wait till I tell Nel” (149)—attests to her ability to communicate between worlds and demonstrates the possibilities of a future, even at the end, confirming her spiritual affinity to Oya, who is able to transcend death. Sula’s death, associated with her rejection of the ancestor, is further explained by the metaphysical cause of illness. It is held that an illness can be symptomatic of an outraged ancestor. Also, illness can be caused by failure to render service and to offer the requisite sacrifices, afford the reverence, and to give the expected offerings. Morrison says, “When you kill the ancestor you kill yourself” (“Rootedness” 344). This ancestral transgression of Sula’s can be examined by both her transgression against the ancestral presence represented by A. Jacks’s (Ajax’s) knowledge of traditional spiritual practices and the rejection of Eva as a familial ancestor.

Because of Sula’s failure to recognize the spiritual nature of Ajax, this earthy man with skin of “black loam,” she is doomed. Introduced early in the novel as the “twenty-one-year-old pool haunt of sinister beauty” with the most imaginative foul mouth in the town (50), he re-enters her life following her sexual escapade with Jude. For Sula, the memory of his “lemon-yellow” pants, which had caused her sexual excitement some years earlier, ignites the relationship. To Ajax, Sula represents the only other woman who is interesting “other than his mother who sat in her shack with six younger sons working roots” (126). He comes often bringing her

various gifts, of which the blackberries are the most significant because of their use in fixing a person.

Once Ajax begins coming regularly, Sula becomes dependent and things begin to change. Suspecting that Sula has put roots on him—this “flying man” and “seventh son of a seventh son” (137) starts to think more and more about “air shows,” “planes,” and flying with regularity to counter Sula’s newly acquired domesticity and the building of a nest (134). This idea of being the seventh son of a seventh son is a recurring trope in African American literature signifying one whose life is charmed. Fearing domination, Ajax seeks help.

The following passage, which describes his mother, indicates Ajax’s access to the resources to secure his release:

She was an evil conjure woman, blessed with seven adoring children whose joy it was to bring her the plants, hair, underclothing, fingernail parings, white hens, blood, camphor, pictures, kerosene and footstep dust that she needed, as well as to order Van Van, High John the Conqueror, Little John to Chew, Devil’s Shoe String, Chinese Wash, Mustard Seed and the Nine Herbs from Cincinnati. She knew about the weather, omens, the living, the dead, dreams and all illnesses and made a modest living with her skills.(126)

Whether acting alone or in collusion with his mother, Ajax is able to free himself from Sula’s influence. Shortly after he leaves, Sula dies. Sula’s death at such an early age and without reference to a previous illness alerts the reader that a major spiritual transgression has occurred to cause her death. Margaret Washington Creel notes that in traditional African societies, “Punishments and retribution for breaches in morals and ethics were not the province of a future world judge but were dealt with on earth” (“Gullah Attitudes” 72). In African culture, it is not uncommon to examine a series of events precipitating the death of a person who predeceases her elders. In these instances there is a search for the signs, not the cause.

The next transgression that Sula commits is directed at Eva. Sula exhibits blatant disrespect for Eva by word and deed. Sula’s verbal misbehavior indicates her incapacity to grasp the hierarchy of the relationship that situates Eva before her as a representation of the ancestor to be duly honored and revered. Sula’s cursing of Eva is a misuse of the spoken word (nommo) or verbal asé that tears down any spiritual protection and power Sula might have had. One of the profound aspects of Oya’s personality is her sharp tongue symbolized by the machetes—Oya’s major symbol. The following conversation highlights the rupture in this intergenerational relationship caused by the sharpness of Sula’s double-edged weapon. When questioned about getting married, Sula responds, “I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself” (93). The notion of “make” is significant used in this context. The Yoruba refer to initiation as making a person. The fact that Sula does not refer to initiation or re-connection to her spiritual personality, but to separation, cuts herself off from the ancestor. Eva cannot depend on Sula to call her name into eternity, and Sula will leave no offspring to call her name either.

Soon after, Sula, devoid of familial loyalty, puts the matriarch of the Peace family in a senior citizen home. This serves as her final breech with the ancestor. In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, Victor Turner identifies the ancestors and the consequences of not duly honoring them: “These ancestors are always the spirits of those who played a prominent part in the lifetime of the persons they are troubling” (10). Turner submits that the reason these ancestors trouble the person(s) is because they have been forgotten. What is paradoxical about Sula’s behavior, however, is that she is the person who is punished for neglect of her ancestral duties, and she is also the person who is chosen to be the intermediary in future rituals that would connect the living with the dead. She earns this distinction because she represents spiritual strength in the same manner as Eva. In fact, Sula could have been as strong as Eva and a replacement for her had she the ability to sacrifice for others.

For instance, like her grandmother, Sula amputates a piece of herself when she cuts off part of her forefinger to frighten the white boys who torment her on her way home from school. Her self-mutilation acts as an initiation rite establishing her courage much in the same way as her grandmother’s amputation of her own leg. However, Sula fails because she has no ancestor to invoke and no one to intercede on her behalf to ensure her fulfillment. Properly invoked, the ancestor secures spiritual and psychic protection for a person. Because of Sula’s excommunication from the ancestor, she cannot fulfill her heroic mission—and the community is further disintegrated.

The group integrates individuals. And in turn, the individual members must submit to the will of the group in order to have integrity. In African world thought, the needs and concerns of groups surpass those of individuals. The individual who breaches this order by placing personal advantages at the expense of others may cause others to experience misfortune, disease, and death. Denial of her ancestor and community accountability makes Sula a scapegoat and a misfit in the community. This judgment is rendered from a traditional group of people who do not “believe doctors could heal” or that “death was accidental” (90). Morrison does not let their assessments of Sula become dismissed as small-town meddling: Sula is different. Sula’s independence is not seen as a desirable trait to possess in the mid-twentieth century as evidenced by other character’s reactions to her.

Similarly, as with Shadrack, a body of lore develops around Sula. In this way they incorporate her into the community. When Mr. Finley chokes on a chicken bone and dies, this too, is attributed to Sula—more specifically to her using the evil eye. Likewise, when a woman gets a sty on her eye after Sula looks at her, Sula is blamed (117). Moreover, similar to Baby Suggs who is judged by the community in Beloved, Sula is considered to have powers superior to mortals, which places her under the highest suspicion. The townsfolk note that she is impervious to insect bites, had “no childhood diseases,” and it is said that “when Sula drank beer she never belched” (115). Here the idea of an individual person distinguishing herself and exceeding the allowable community norms is seen as a potential to destabilize the collective’s balance.

In keeping with the inherent contradictions espoused by the idea that the “dead are alive,” Toni Morrison presents another equally conflicting one; Sula has both a destructive and a constructive presence. While Sula’s behavior upon her return to the Bottom

outrages her community, making her a pariah, ironically, her presence generally has a beneficial effect on the Bottom. Sula’s malevolence highlights the community’s munificence. Her influence is not totally evil as the people of Medallion re-direct their scattered energies and reinvest it into family matters using Sula’s lack of familial concerns as catalyst. Without Sula as a scapegoat they are free to revert to their previous indifferences and slackness.

After her death, even though the community assumes its former shape, the village is troubled. This trouble is attributed to many things, but more specifically to the cultural ruptures that have occurred in the novel. These ruptures are represented by events such as people going to white folk’s hospitals or placing elders in nursing homes, and seers not attending to the importance of dreams. What the community needs is the harnessing of forces to balance the negative influences in the form of ritual acts. Since ritual is designed to keep the believers spiritually clean, renewed, and centered they appeal to the voices of nature. They are compelled to act in a communal way to fashion a proper burial for Sula to create harmony and repair the disjunction. When something happens to one member of the community, a comprehensive redress of these abnormal circumstances is indicated.

The need to propitiate the forces responsible for the malaise that causes a “restless irritability” is of chief importance in the minds of the community members. The townspeople misinterpret the signs that appear after Sula’s death. The first sign indicates life represented by the construction of the New River Road tunnel. The second sign suggests the death of cultural values indicated by the building of a senior citizen home to place the elders of the community. The third sign is the “freezing rain” emblematic of stasis or stillness. The narrator explains the obfuscation of the signs: “Still it was not those illnesses or even the ice that marked the beginning of the trouble that self-fulfilled prophecy that Shadrack carried on his tongue … there was something wrong” (153). I submit that because there is no rebirth in the community, one of the prerequisites for eternity and continuation of the ancestral line, this collective ritual provides the renewal necessary to re-establish harmony, since the central purpose of ritual is to impose patterns of behavior upon the individual in the interest of the whole group.

Benjamin C. Ray notes that restitution needs to be made to compensate for diminution of vital force by means of propitiatory offerings and ritual purification of the village and its inhabitants (referred to by the BaLuba as koyija kibundi [washing the village])(Ray 149). Having no other resources except National Suicide Day to deal with the evil visited upon the town by the harsh winter, they shape their exigency into this established ritual. The purpose of the ritual is not only to pacify the spirits for relief for the winter; it is also a ritual sacrifice or ebo for Oya.

As a spiritual officiate, Shadrack is called upon to adjudicate the improprieties of the community. He recognizes that although Sula has crossed over into “a sleep of water always,” there is still need for a culminating ritual. Funerals as culminating events are equally as important for the living as well as the dead. Sula was not funeralized properly; there was no wake-keeping and other ritual activities. The community overlooks this important activity. They do not participate by sending “yellow cakes” for the funeral repast, nor do they “leave their quilt patches in disarray to run to the house” (172). Additionally, there were those who said when they heard she was dying, “She ain’t dead yet?” (172). Not contributing to the ritual meal after the burial constitutes a major cultural and spiritual breach. Moreover, turning her body over to a white funeral home where she has a closed coffin funeral signifies the harshest of all spiritual trespasses. From an African American standpoint, the dressing of the body is a skill that can be only done by black morticians, who know how to ready the person’s body for viewing. The ultimate compliment to honor the deceased is to remark, “She looks just like herself.” Additionally, having a closed casket does not provide the cultural closure needed to substantiate the death.15

The importance of rites for the dead relate not only to the deceased individual, but to the community as well. The funeral is attended by a few who are brave enough “to witness the burial of a witch” and sing “Shall We Gather at the River?” for politeness’s sake (150). The song, “Shall We Gather at the River?,” had become a question no longer linked to the spiritual realm associated with ritual and the former worship of the bisimbi or water spirits, but instead prefigures the ritual at the mouth of the cave where members are sacrificially killed in the baptism of water. Also, the song’s inquiry is a question of vital importance. Shall Africans, as a people, gather/collect the continuous flow of spiritual-cultural ideas represented by the river, the ancestors?

So, Shadrack accompanied by Tar Baby and the Deweys who represent the lesser spirits—the intermediaries that give “assurance of human perpetuity beyond the grave”—send Sula off in traditional fashion (Creel, “Gullah Attitudes” 73).16 However, he is not able to persuade those “who understood the spirits touch which made them dance, who understood whole families bending their backs in a field while singing as from one throat, who understood the ecstasy of river baptisms under suns just like this one” (160). Those that went meet their end while Shadrack stands there ringing his bell. Robert Farris Thompson explains this idea from a Kongo perspective: “The death of an important person occasions a split within the community. The crown of bells militates against this possibility: I am the bell that sounds within the town. I sound for unity. You have to remain united even as I remain here forever bound to you” (Thompson and Cornet 147). Shadrack’s bell attempts to engender this accord. However, having forgotten the other ritual implements, it does not have the efficacy needed to be successful.

Toni Morrison leaves readers with a formidable picture of cultural and physical death by reiterating the true powers available to African people if they listen to ancestral voices, practice their cultural traditions, and accept responsibility for one another. At the novel’s end, half the town is dead, there is limited hope for the future, and Eva’s life has been rendered finite as the sole survivor of the Peace family. Because Sula has failed to fulfill her destiny there is no one to call Eva’s name into eternity. Moreover, Sula’s excommunication from the community, the ancestor—and her inability to understand the concept of intermutuality—leave behind “circles and circles of sorrow” (174).

Notes

1. All references to Sula are from the 1973 Knopf paperback edition and will consist of pagination in parenthetical format.

2. See Song of Solomon and Jazz chapters for further discussion of the epic contours in Morrison’s novels.

3. Birenbaum asserts that the most important thing that a hero does is to travel, which is a traversing of mythic space. See Birenbaum, Myth and Mind, 55.

4. See Adjaye, Time in the Black Experience, as well as Fu-Kiau’s description of time as the Kongo propose in the essay on Jazz.

5. See essay on Jazz for a more detailed discussion of this idea.

6. Morrison’s introduction of a male character as the first focal point of her narrative is a pattern initiated in Sula that is repeated in Tar Baby and Song of Solomon. Also significant is his name. Shad is the name of a member of the herring family that ascends rivers in the spring to spawn. It also suggests shadow.

7. The use of the terms eccentric and peculiar are not confined to their usual connotations and are not meant to be pejorative. In the context of this study, the term is extended to and describes those who primarily listen within and attend to the dictates of the spiritual realm, or to those who are in touch with the natural world.

8. See the chapter on Beloved for a more detailed idea of the river as a matrix of memory.

9. The word medallion further solidifies the idea of rank. As a cognate of the word medal, it indicates an acknowledgment of something of consequence to be duly noted. It is also the physical equivalent of a title.

10. The idea that his grandfather is not mentioned by name, but referred to as “long time dead,” is an appellation referencing the ancestors and hints that his grandfather who lived on the river may have been a river priest of Oya as well. He also lived at the edge of town and made his living on the river. Most of the character’s names in Morrison’s novels suggest significant attributes of the characters’ personalities.

11. This trio of women is another leitmotif that Morrison uses. In The Bluest Eye there is the trio of prostitutes: China, Poland, and the Maginot Line living under one roof. Claudia, Frieda, and Mrs. Macteer are another trio of women. In Song of Solomon there is Ruth, First Corinthians, and Magdalene (called Lena). In that same novel, Pilate’s house consists of Pilate, Reba, and Hagar. In Beloved, the house at 124 Bluestone Road consists of the female occupants Sethe, Denver, and Beloved. There are multiple significations in the ascription of trios of women. For example, there is a story for each of the women—or a story in every name. These narratives help to erase the stereotypes or basic stock characters that form a major part of the African American literary tradition. Also, because these households for the most part consist of intergenerational women, Morrison engenders a sense of continuity subverting the disruptions created by the historical enslavement of African people and provides a context for understanding the traditions of the past and a clear direction for the future. Samuels and Weems add, “By including distinct communities of women, Morrison allows us to see individuals who refused to be destroyed by external definitions of the other” (25). In addition to the three women, there are other trios such as the three Deweys, the date of Suicide Day (the third of January), the three ritual implements that Shadrack uses, and the three beets that motivate Eva’s journey of survival.

12. In this novel, as in Beloved, there are significant references to Oya. For example, the number eighteen reduces to nine and represents the amount of time Eva spends away from her family making her sacrifice. When making offerings to Oya, the supplicant provides nine or any multiple of nine items, since nine is Oya’s emblematic number. Plum’s name is significant because it represents one of the fruits that are ritually given to her when a devotee makes an ebo, or offering, because of its purple color’s association with Oya. Also, note the connection of Eva’s motivation for her journey as being down to her last three beets, also representative of Oya’s color.

13. See discussion of this Yoruba Òrìsà in The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon chapters.

14. Feeding the hole is a Yoruba ritual performed to strengthen one’s body and spirit along with one’s relationship with the earth and the ancestors.

15. For example, because Tupac Shakur’s body was cremated, an enduring conversation exists concerning the slain rapper’s not being dead. However, the death of his contemporary Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, whose body was paraded through the streets of the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, has not generated any rumors of his still being alive.

16. Their identities as intermediaries or bisimbi spirits are intimated by their description. MacGaffey notes that bisimbi are the tutelary spirits of special children (“Twins, Simbi Spirits” 213). The Deweys are described as three boys who, under the influence of Eva, have merged into one personality: “They spoke with one voice, thought with one mind, and maintained an annoying privacy” (39). They have even begun to look alike so that even their mothers cannot tell them apart. These Deweys “who went wild at the thought of water” resemble Kongo bisimbi. This transformation and their identity suggest the meaning of their collective name. The word dew derives from the Indo-European base that produced words that mean flow, run, wash, and brook. In the novel’s culminating ritual, they are presumed dead because their bodies are not found (162). Failure to find them suggests they have returned to their source.

Works Cited

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Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2015 Gale, Cengage Learning Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)    Zauditu-Selassie, K. "Always: The Living Ancestor and the Testimony of Will in Sula." Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by

Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 366, Gale, 2015. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1100118462/GLS?u=lincclin_mdcc&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=36593219. Accessed 29 June 2024. Originally published in African Spiritual Traditions in the Novels of Toni Morrison, UP of Florida, 2009, pp. 49-66.

Gale Document Number: GALE|H1100118462