Anita Price Davis - Sula: MAXNotes Literature Guide

The theme of discontent with ones lot in life is obvious throughout the chapter. The hilly land becomes the reward for the ex-slave; the worker trustingly accepts the word of the farmer that the hills are superior to the valley. The hill residents soon become disillusioned with the acreage that they have accepted and envy the land of the valley residents. On the other hand, the inhabitants of the low lands often view with envy the neighborhood that they can see and hear above them.

Pronounced change is assaulting Medallion. The Bottom in particular, the narrator tells us, is changing quite rapidly. The Medallion City Golf Course and the suburbs are replacing the woods and the buildings in the old neighborhood. The residents of the Bottom, however, remain innocent and totally unaware of the value of what they possess. Even the threat of losing what they own does not bring an awareness to the hill residents. The result of the change is lost on the innocent hill residents.

It is evident that the setting is integral to the plot; it also serves to illuminate the characters and clarify the conflict. The setting suggests the idea of Heaven and Hell. The Bottom does indeed resemble Heaven, the residents look down on the white people below, and the innocence of the people suggests their goodness. The inhabitants of the Bottom, however, often ignore the beauty and their good fortune to be there.

Innocence is a major theme in this chapter. The slave trustingly accepts the story of his owner about the Bottom. The slave owner takes advantage of the naivet of the slave and uses the slaves trusting nature to his own advantage. He has deliberately used deceit. The residents of the Bottom are also innocent in that they do not realize the value of their land and their culture.

It is at this point that Sula departs from the stories one usually reads. There are no rewards for the goodness and innocence of the slave; there is no punishment evident for the evil acts of the slave owner. The separation of the whites and the blacks continues over several generations, and both parties maintain their discontent.

The slaves and their descendants seem unaware of the value of their possessions; they desire the valley. The valley dwellers continue to be greedy and cling to what they havewhile wanting what the Bottom dwellers have also. Every indication is that the valley residents will take over the hill land and displace the residents there without any punishment for their greed and deceit.

It is significant that both good and evil are in the story. The blacks on the hilly land accept the fact that both right and wrong exist, but they do not try to change things. Even when the townspeople of Medallion, Ohio, spread their golf course and suburbs into the Bottom and raze, or tear down, the buildings there, the inhabitants of the Bottom do not protest. These hill inhabitants see evil merely as something that they must withstand or bear and not as something they must eliminate or change. Retaliation for wrongs inflicted on them or on their ancestors is something that the hill residents do not consider. They do not demand rewards for their tenacity or punishment for the wicked.

The characters in the chapter are flat characters. Morrison does not try to make them complete to the reader by revealing their thoughts, their actions, their speech, or their personal history. Rather Morrison presents them as a stereotypical slave owner with only his own interests at heart and a slave, who is innocent and often misled by one who pretends to have his best interests at heart. The stereotypical view of the easily-duped slave seems to persist into the twentieth century with the innocent Bottom residents.

Morrison makes use of many stylistic devices in depicting the Bottom. Alliteration is evident in ...a bit of cakewalk, a bit of black bottom, a bit of messing around.... She effectively uses contrasts: white vs. black, hills vs. valley, slave owner vs. slave, trickster vs. tricked, innocent vs. guilty. Personification pictures fingers which dance on the wood and kiss skin. Very descriptive language allows the reader to see both the streets of Medallion which were hot and dusty with progress and the heavy trees sheltering the shacks in the Bottom.

Morrison does not use a simple chronological order for the plot of this chapteror for the entire book. Rather she weaves the plot through the use of foreshadowing, flashbacks, and chronological development. The plot spirals, doubles back, and skips forward. Such plot development allows the narrator much leeway in telling the story and makes it necessary for the readers to attend carefully to the detail to ensure that they receive all the information correctly.

With such an eclectic order in the plot, the writer can leave the reader hanging and answer the questions at a later point in the narrative; the writer does not have to systematically answer the posed questions in chronological order. Waiting for the answers creates suspense for the reader.