Sula--Part one

"In the safe harbor of each other's company they could afford to abandon the ways of other people and concentrate on their own perceptions of things"

"Their friendship was as intense as it was sudden. They found relief in each other's personalities"

Theses two parts from the text were something that stuck out to me when I first read the story. The many ways the author uses her words to describe the close relationship of the girls is truly amazing and beautifully written. There are many instances were words are used in such a way to help one understand the closeness of the two girls but I just picked these two because they were my favorites. I picked them and reacted to them because I too have a friend that I feel such a strong bond with. We have been friends since grade school and it is truly a blessing to have someone so close to share things with and be around. My family went through some hardships when I was a child (although nothing like the situations in the story) but I was able to connect with the girls in the way that they were able to rely on each other and find relief with one another. This is also vice versa, in High School my best friends dad died and so I was able to be her relief and safe harbor. I think it is a rare thing to find such a friend that you feel you could share anything with, knowing no matter what they will understand and you don't have to worry about them judging you. A friendship like that is hard to put in to words and I think this story includes some of the best and most accurate accounts of how friendship is.



Now the biggest thing that I reacted to in the story were a series of several parts that I am going to list below:

"Eva looked into Hannah's eyes, 'Is? My baby? Burning?', the two women did not speak, for the eyes of each were enough for the other. Then Hannah closed hers and ran toward the voices of neighbors calling for water."

"Sure you do. You love her, like I love Sula. I just don't like her. That's the difference."

"When he slipped from her hands and sailed away out over they could still hear his bubbly laughter. The water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank. The pressure of his hard and tight little fingers was still in Sula's palms as she stood looking at the closed place in the water. They expected him to come back up, laughing. Both girls stared at the water."

"The sheriff said whyn't he throw it on back into the water. The bargeman said he never shoulda taken it out in the first place."

"Eva said yes, but inside she disagreed and remained convinced that Sula had watched Hannah burn, not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested."

All of the things above that I took out of the story got a strong and similar reaction from me for all of them. I was almost sick when I read these parts of the story. The lack of love, emotion and compassion makes it a difficult read. I wanted to know what in the world would cause a mother to burn her own son. I wanted to know why a mother would not like her own daughter. The way the girls just stare after drowning a young boy made me wonder what sort of things these two must feel and have lived threw to make them react this way, just staring. I wanted to know how someone could be so cold when talking about the body of a dead child. How could the sheriff have said that? Finally why would the daughter just watch her own mother burn? These questions came to me and I was appalled at the reading's lack of emotion. It is so dark and sad to see these things happen, but it is even worse to know that they happen in real life every day. Many of the things remind me not only of other text I have read or movies I have seen, but also of things that I see on the nightly news on a regular basis.
A woman kills her own children because she is sick of caring for them, a husband murders his pregnant wife and unborn child, these are things that people in our society today deal with when they watch the news and read the paper. So many instances are like this, and it would be nice to say that the author has a big imagination but we can't because she is merely reflecting things in today's world. I guess what probably made me react this way is because I come from a close family where there is nothing but love. I have never had to question whether my mother loved me as Hannah did to Eva, or ever had to wonder if my mom even likes me as Sula's mother Hannah did not. I just can't take these things in because I am filled with disbelief at how things like that could happen. It makes me glad and also guilty at the same time, glad that I have a loving family but also guilty that many do not, and problems, such as the ones in the story, are part of their everyday life.

Another thing I was reminded of from the text was the passage with Chicken Little. Throughout the story I have been getting a mental image of Sula and it reminded me a lot of McCaughly Culkin's character in "The Good Son", (if you have not seen this film I recommend it). In the film McCaughly's character is a very dark and troubled child with detached emotions and a sense of danger about him. His character gradually builds up through the movie through numerous acts, some of which start out smaller and harmless until he ends up trying to murder his own sister. In one scene that reflected the text Culkin is ice skating with his younger sister and he starts to spin her around and around and lets her go out onto thin ice where she falls though and the camera flashes back to him and he is just standing there...staring, just as the girls were. The only thing I saw different between the text and movie is that Culkin did it on purpose and I don't think that Sula meant to throw Chicken into the water, but it is an idea that I won't dismiss quite yet. I hope to discover a bit more about her character and I read further and then will I have a sense of how to judge her.