Sula as a Defiant Self-exile

Sula as a Defiant Self-exile

Sula in Tony Morrison's Sula as a Defiant Self-Exile
Morrison's Sula, features a protagonist who shares her name with the book who has the decided attitude not to form social bonds in the Bottom, a black district inside, Medallion. Sectioned into two parts, the book divides between Sula Peace's coming-of-age experience before she leaves the Bottom and her return to the Bottom as a mature woman.   Sula's unusual exorbitance results from an eccentric upbringing that openly accepts and welcomes transience.   Thus due to her upbringing in the Bottom, Sula becomes a defiant exile upon her return.
One of the areas that Sula isolates herself from is her family.   The narrator describes Sula's house as a "throbbing disorder constantly awry with things, people, voices and the slamming of doors . . ." (52), which suggests a family accustomed to spontaneous disruptions and fleeting alliances.   The distance between Peace mothers and daughters in Sula, then, allows the daughters considerable freedom in fashioning an independant self.   An unrestricted household such as the Peace Family, builds Sula into an impetuous and independent freethinker.
When she and her best friend, Nel, encounter the usual bullies on a short-cut back home, Sula does not seek Nel's help but promptly cuts her own little finger off to intimidate them (54). Sula, already a composed figure who is accustomed to constant changes at home is, however, shaken by her unexpected hand in the death of a neighborhood boy named Chicken Little. Before Chicken's demise, Sula helps him up a tree and "She followed the boy, steadying him, when he needed it, with her hand and her reassuring voice" (60).   Sula, the unintentional grim reaper, promises Chicken such security before sending him flying into the river, that the abruptness of his end strikes Sula.
Sula experiences two other life-changing disruptions besides Chicken Little's accident. One involves an overheard statement that her mother, Hannah, makes about her....