These were my answers to the final for my summer Women's Lit class:
Paul Villapiano
ENG 380; Final Exam; 07-30-02
1.
Although everyone ends up not liking the woman Sula had turned out to be, some sooner than others, it was not until her death that she was separated from the community. Not even when the people of the Bottom were convinced she was a witch was she excluded from the community, since “it was not for them to expel or annihilate” the one that decided was “the source of their misfortune” (Morrison 2046). But the people were glad that they were finally rid of her with her death, which was “the best news folks up in the Bottom had had since the promise of work at the tunnel” (Morrison 2060). With Sula out of their lives they felt as though “a brighter day was dawning” (Morrison 2061). However, Sula had burned as a magnificent fire within her community; she was a light they lived by and needed. With her gone, their brighter day was drawing to a close. As their sun set, they had mistaken that final flare of light for the break of morning, neglected the twilight, and were taken off guard by the night.
It wasn’t as though they had had no warning. The misfortunes that eventually befell them had been foreshadowed in Sula’s childhood. It occurred during the microcosm of expulsion she experienced as a child, which she described as the time when she learned there was no one else to rely on besides herself and that, with the death of Chicken Little, she couldn’t even rely on herself (Morrison; from some page I can’t find but remember reading). What had begun with the rejection she felt when she overheard Hannah saying, “I just don’t like her,” just after she had said she loved Sula led to a string of strange incidents that ended with Hannah burning to death and Sula just watching her from the porch (Morrison 2019). So, if that is what could happen simply because Sula felt rejected, it is no wonder that such calamity befell the Bottom when they took liberty with her death to cut her off from their lives by not even morning her.
With Sula out of the picture, the people of the Bottom lost the unity they had gained through her. She had been their excuse that gave them “leave to protect and love one another” (Morrison 2046). They had taken Sula as an argument against their own way of life; she was there antithesis. But without the blessing of having her there in the role placed upon her as the threat to constantly remind them of how much they need each other and of how valuable they were to each other, they ceased with the increased loving and caring they had been performed upon them in rebuttal. She had shed light upon their lives and enabled them to see the true importance of their relationships. But they had taken this new insight out of context, so when the light faded away, they returned to their previous bitter state.
Maybe it was a combination of the warmth lost when Sula’s waning flame had been snuffed out by her sickness and of the warmth lost from the hearts that didn’t love, and weren’t loved, as much as they had before that brought the days of frost so suddenly. And without the support of one another, the ice storm and its long lingering and misfortunes became worse, and added to the string of strange signs that warned of the upcoming dire, climatic conclusion, a ruined Thanksgiving and Christmas. And maybe the warmth was brought back by Sula in those first few days in January and brought back the joy with her that they finally felt on the third day as she returned in the spirit to witness what she knew would come, to see what the final blow would be and what it would be like, to stand off in the distances somewhere behind and beyond Shadrack and the others to just watch the burying and drowning from the edge of her eternal abode.
And to add to these calamities, just as they turned on each other without Sula to unite them, the people also ended up turning on their community. They came down from the Bottom, the white upper class took it over, and since it no longer existed as a real place, it became another one of the mere locations of “separate houses with separate televisions and separate telephones and less and less dropping by” (Morrison 2068). With all of this together, Toni Morrison showed the misfortune that befell the community of the Bottom when they finally excluded Sula in her death.
2.
Women’s literature contains several reoccurring similarities throughout the centuries partly because of the tradition of literature and ideals that have built and been passed on through generations of writers and readers. The similarities also exist because society hasn’t changed much toward women, and the improvements it has made were slowly done so.
Community
