All Throughout Toni Morrison’S Work Sula, The Author Focuses

All throughout Toni Morrison’s work Sula, the author focuses on several topics and theme throughout her book that once played an important role in the everyday lifestyle of those during the time the book was published. Today, these issues are still very much present and hold a great concern in our day to day society. However, out of all the topics that are woven into Sula, it is the issues of identity that shines the brightest. Born in Ohio on February 18th, 1931, Morrison’s family originally came from the south and in order to escape the racism that would have surrounded them, they moved to the northern states. Considering the time period in which she grew up in, no matter the area, it is without question that Morrison herself would have†¦show more content†¦However, her personal growth does not branch out much farther than that. According to Diane Gillespie and Missy Kubitschek, in their article â€Å"Who Cares? Women-Centered Psychology in Sula,† â₠¬Å"For the female residents of the Bottom, the self exists in relation to the entire community; there is no alternative.† Monika Hoffarth-Zelloe, writer of â€Å"Resolving the Paradox?: An Interlinear Reading of Toni Morrison’s Sula† comments that â€Å"Nel is a representation of the ‘old type’ woman who ‘lived only for the collective values of wife and mother, and apart from marriage had practically no place in society.’† Shortly after her graduation, Nel gets married to a young African American man named Jude Greene and together they make â€Å"one Jude† [83]. There is no development for her, as she is always one part of a whole. It was also during this time that a woman’s job, no matter the race or where she was from, was to keep the house clean and organized, bring children into the world and mother them, and make sure that her husband is satisfied. The relationship between mother and daughter is another key piec e in Nel’s inability to develop self awareness. Gillespie and Kubitschek discuss this topic as well and state â€Å"A girl forms her gender identity by observing female role activities that are ‘immediately apprehensible in the world of her daily life.’† It is already known that Nel’s grandmother, Rochelle, is a whore and dueShow MoreRelatedToni Morrison: the Bluest Eye and Sula Essay2313 Words   |  10 Pagesplace of pamphlets, poems, and novels. Themes such as the quest for freedom, the nature of evil, and the powerful verses the powerless became the themes of African- American literature. In a book called Fiction and Folklore: the novels of Toni Morrision author Trudier Harris explains that Early folk beliefs were so powerful a force in the lives of slaves that their masters sought to co-opt that power. Slave masters used such beliefs in an attempt to control the behavior of their slaves(Harris 2)