I would have to agree with Kim, this was an excellent book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and was also hard pressed to pick just two pieces from the text to explore. However, here is the first one:
"Accompanied by a plague of robins, Sula came back to Medallion. The little yam-breasted shuddering birds were everywhere, exciting very small children away from their usual welcome into a vicious stoning. Nobody knew why or from where they had come. What they did know was that you couldn't go anywhere without stepping into their pearly shit, and it was hard to hang up clothes, pull weeds or just sit on the front porch when robins were flying and dying all around you." (p.89)
I chose this intro scene to the second half because it was funny to me. The author equates Sula's return with a "plaque" of robins that shit everywhere. How is that not hilarious???? The children were fascinated by the robins, and people couldn't go anywhere without stepping in their shit, or having them fly and die all around them. I think another interesting idea behind this passage is how the author mentions the death of the birds "all around you." In the first part of the book, when Sula was growing up in Medallion, death was all around. And her return to Medallion is heralded in by the onset of more mass deaths. "Nobody knew why or from where they had come," that's kind of how people looked at the birth, presence, and return of Sula. People weren't really sure about her strange behavior and occurrence in their town, but they did know they were sick of stepping in her shit. That's a metaphor obviously, but you get the point.
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The next passage I liked was the one where Nell finds Sula and Jude together. . .
"Her chin was in her hand and she sat like a visitor from out of town waiting for the hosts to get some quarreling done and over with so the card game could continue and me wanting her to leave so I could tell you privately that you had forgotten to button your fly because I didn't want to say it in front of her, Jude. And even when you begin to talk, I couldn't hear because I was worried about you not knowing that your fly was open and scared too because your eyes looked like the soldiers' that time on the train when my mother turned to custard." (p.106)
I like how the author describes Sula as a visitor, yet the words she uses makes me think of Sula as a visiting child, "her chin was in her hand." I think it's rather funny that Sula is also described as looking like she's waiting for the card game to start back up again. That's kind of how Sula looked at life, as a game, and she wasn't very aware of the more serious sides of life. The way Nell wants to tell Jude his zipper is undone in private, and not in front of her friend. That's humours to me as well. I picture this subservient woman who just caught her husband cheating on her, with her best friend, and she can't even stand up for herself. All Nell can think about is the impropriety of the situation she comes across. I picture Nell acting just like her mother might have in this scene. It was really enlightening reading this scene, and I liked the imagery associated here as well.
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2 comments:
I agree that the introduction the the second part of the book was brilliant. However, I thought it was way creepier than it was funny. Birds freak me out in general, but that mass of birds just swarming in the air reminded me of the Hitchcock movie. Creepy. I didn't really think of the metaphor, though, about the townspeople getting tired of stepping in the shit Sula leaves in her wake. I liked that, as nasty as the visual is. It made a lot of sense and I could see how it played out a lot later in the text.
The part where Nel is fixated on Jude's zipper reminds me of another story we read in class. In "the Revolt of Mother", when the woman is upset with her husband, but still bakes his pies regardless of their fight. I remember it saying something about how she ALWAYS made the pie no matter if they were fighting or not. Nel is kind of the same way with Jude here--- he's just done this terrible thing to her, yet she can't stop herself from the automatic reaction to want to tell him about the zipper and save him some embarrassment.
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