Sula--part 2

After finishing this book I don't know if I would call it one of my favorites but I did like it. It was written so well and had so many underlying things in it. It was about a friendship with two women who really didn't know themselves and the only time that they felt they had a center was when they were with each other.

In the second half of the books I picked two different passages that I reacted to the greatest.

The first passage is:
"Sula was smiling. 'I mean I don't know what the fuss is about. I mean, everything in the world loves you. White men love you. They spend so much time worrying about your penis they forget their own. The only thing they want to do is cut off a nigger's privates. And if that ain't love and respect I don't know what is. And white women? They chase you all to every corner of the earth, feel for you under every bed. I knew a white woman wouldn't leave the house after 6 o'clock for fear one of you would snatch her. Now ain't that love? They think rape soon's they see you, and if they don't get the rape they looking for, they scream it anyway just so the search won't be in vain. Colored women worrying themselves into bad health just trying to hang on to your cuffs. Even little--white and black, boys and girls--spend all their childhood eating their hearts out 'cause they think you don't love them. And if that ain't enough, you love yourselves. Nothing in this world loves a black man more than another black man. You hear of solitary white men, but niggers? Can't stay away from one another a whole day. So. It looks to me like you the envy of the world."

When I read this it stuck in my mind as odd. It is said in a way that you know Sula is using a bit of humor but then again it gives you an insight to just how strangely her mind works. She has an odd way of thinking about things and taking them in. Here she lists all of these things about black men that most would not associate with "love" or feelings of "envy". But she twists the things around in a way that could be taken into account. It would take someone with just as far out-of-the-box thinking as Sula to actually believe and listen to her. I think that is why Jude and Nel laugh. Sula laughs too, but in a way I think she meant everyword, yes I think she wanted to mix in some humor and use the statement to get a laugh out of her friend and her friend's husband, but I also think she wanted to get that point out. I think this by just knowing her background and reading the book, having the knowledge of Sula and how oddly she works I can assume with confidence that she thought this passage had truth to it.

The second passage I picked is:

"Her body did not need oxygen. She was dead. Sula felt her face smiling. 'Well I be damned,' she thought, 'It didn't even hurt. Wait'll I tell Nel."

This small line in the story stuck out to me because, here we have an example of Sula being in one of the darkest times in the whole book and who does she first think of? Nel. Even though the two woman have fought, not seen each other for years, and don't talk anymore, she thinks of Nel. This just goes to show that all along under all the other stuff between them and under all the stuff that Sula does, the strong bond of friendship is still there. This line showed that, it showed a glimpse of the friendship that was so evident in the first half of the book. We see this with Nel and some of the thing she says in the story as well. After Nel's husband leaves her for Sula, she still has thoughts that show the connection is still there. Nel is going through a tough time and seems very depressed and emotionally distraught, and there is a time where she even says,"She would have to ask somebody about that, somebody she could confide in and who knew a lot of things,like Sula, for Sula would know or if she didn't she would say something funny that would make it alright. Ooo no, not Sula. Here she was in the midst of it, hating it, scared of it, and again she thought of Sula as though they were still friends and talked things over. That was too much. to lose Jude and not have Sula to talk to about it because it was Sula that he had left her for."
Nel says this, says she wishes she could talk to Sula about her problems, but then realizes that Sula caused the problems. She talks about hate and not being friends but it almost seems that no matter how hard she tries she can't get rid of the bond that she shares with Sula. This is seen at the end as well, when Nel realizes after Sula's death, that the feeling of something missing and sadness that she thought was caused by Jude was actually caused by her missing her best friend.

This story was odd because of the weird lives the girls led, the things they did and the connection they shared even after everything had happened. If one took out the biggest message of the book it would probably be that some friendships last forever and are to strong to break.