Good and Evil Explored in Term Paper

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Sula is perceived as the wild child because she does not live a conventional life. She moves away from Bottom, has numerous affairs with many men, and when she returns, she is recognized as evil. Sula is called a "roach" (112) and a "*****" (112). Her death is a welcome relief in Bottom. Her affair with Nel's husband does make matters any better. All of this makes Nel look almost like an angel in comparison. Sula did not live a nice, neat little life. Unlike Nel, she did not marry and have children and she did not regret it. She was pessimistic and sarcastic while Nel was controlling and composed. However, do these facts make perception real? Barbara Lounsberry does not think so. In fact, she writes that Morrison "uses the lives of the major character in Sula to demonstrate both the variety and futlity of human attempts to order and contain experience" (Lounsberry). As we see, perspective is everything but perspectives can be wrong.

It takes death to reveal the truth behind everything. When Nel goes to see Sula on her deathbed, she is lead there from her sense of duty. Sula asks Nel how she knows if she was the good one. The visit with Eva also plants doubt in Nel's mind. When she realizes that she enjoyed watching Chicken Little fall deep into the water more than Sula did (for Sula was terrified), she understands that Sula was the good one. Her psychic break allows the truth to set in. Nel's tears at the end of the novel reinforce her loss and her realization that sometimes good lies behind the veil of evil and she knows that she will mourn the loss of her good friend for the rest of her life.

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Morrison turns perception upside-down in Sula by forcing us to look at ourselves the way we look at others. Throughout the novel, Sula is the character that is flawed and imperfect. In comparison to Nel, Sula is messed up and there is no hope because Sula herself does not think there is any. While Sula does nothing to counteract her bad label, it becomes apparent that maybe she did not deserve it. Nel found it too easy to blame Sula because she was the one that held the boy's hands. The town found it too easy to hate Sula because she was not like one of them and she defied convention. These behaviors reinforce society's need to find a victim. Sula was the victim her entire life but, in the end, she was more true to herself than Nel because she lived life on her own terms. She lived the best life she could while Nel lived according to what society dictated. Nel's life by all accounts was "good" but as revealed in Sula, "good" and "evil" are terms we should never take for granted.

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