“Circles of sorrow”
Choose any ONE of the following 10 topics:
1. Analyze the ending of the novel. What are the “circles of sorrow” that Nel experiences? Is the ending pessimistic, optimistic, or something else altogether?
2. Nel and Sula’s friendship is central in the novel. As children, the girls develop their self-concept through the friendship. When they are adults, Nel feels betrayed when Sula sleeps with Jude, but Sula has also felt betrayed by Nel during the Chicken Little incident. How did Nel betray Sula as regards Chicken Little’s death and what is the significance of this mutual betrayal in their lives?
3. How do people who are intensely individualistic fare in the novel? Is it possible to break away from the values of the community and to be one’s own person Answer the question with reference to at least two of the novel’s characters.
4. How and by whom is love expressed in the novel? In what ways does the love in the novel ease the suffering of the characters? How is love not enough to diminish the suffering of the characters? Answer the question by discussing at least two characters in the novel.
5. In what ways are the various characters in the novel alienated from the community? How do they cope with their loneliness, their preoccupations, and other effects of feeling alienated?
6. Compare and contrast the journey of self-discovery for two characters in the book. Remember to take a position in your thesis that establishes the significance of the comparison and contrast.
7. Contrast Nel’s relationship to her mother and Sula’s interaction with her mother. Remember to take a position in your thesis that establishes the significance of the contrast.
8. Trace the use of three symbols in the novel and explain their connection to a theme in the novel.
9. What does Shadrack’s character teach us about the effects of war and the ways mentally ill people can be ostracized from a community?
10. Although no one has ever joined Shadrack on National Suicide Day, in the chapter titled “1941,” much of the town marches toward the tunnel where they have not been able to work, and, in their rage, they try to “kill, as best they could, the tunnel they were forbidden to build” (160). What is the significance of the event at the tunnel and the resulting deaths there?
Sample Solution
“Circles of sorrow”
Sula is a 1973 novel by Nobel Price-Winning author Toni Morrison. By the end of the novel Sula has died, most of the residents of the Bottom have died, and Nel finds herself alone. When she finally cries for the loss of her friendship with Sula, Nel opens up a lot of questions for us. We learn that her cry has “no bottom and it has no top, just circles and circles of sorrow” (1965.73). Nel misses her friend, despite the fact that Sula stole her husband, but in the end, their friendship endures more than any other in the novel. The ending doesn’t seem happy in the traditional sense, but Nel finally gets the release she has been needing for years.
