This is from Haley, with edits from me.
When I was reading, I began to realize that there is significant symbolism behind Sula's birthmark. From what we have read so far, whenever the birthmark is described, it is referred to as a "rose". However, when it comes to Nel's children, it is called "the scary black thing". And when it comes to Jude, it's called a "rattlesnake". How can these changes be interpreted? What is Morrison's purpose in creating this symbol?
Sula’s birthmark symbolizes her deceitfulness in various stages. Morrison initially describes Sula’s birthmark as “shaped something like a stemmed rose” (Morrison 52). She labels Sula’s birthmark as a rose in order to distinguish that Sula is innocent due to her naivety of the world. Although Sula seems well-meaning, Morrison shifts Sula’s character as she reveals her deceitfulness by having Nel’s children depict the birthmark as “the scary black thing”. In this period of the story, Morrison wants to infer how Sula has now shed her superficial innocent lining and is beginning to reveal her dishonesty through her treacherous undertone. When Jude first encountered Sula, he perceived her birthmark to be a “rattlesnake” (Morrison 104). Morrison symbolizes the mark as a warning for dishonesty and cheating. After reading Chapter 1939, Sula’s birthmark is described as “Hannah’s ashes marking her from the very beginning” (Morrison 114). At this point, Sula’s birthmark symbolizes her mother, Hannah. Following in the footsteps of her mother, Sula has become just as loose and easy as Hannah was during her time. Morrison puts emphasis on Sula’s birthmarks in order to depict how others see her. Through other characters interpretations of Sula’s birthmark, Morrison is able to foreshadow the series of events that are about to unfold.
ReplyDeleteIan Glazman
ReplyDeleteAlthough I could deliberate endlessly over the many incarnations of Sula's birthmark, the one particular one I want to spend the most time on is one I've touched upon earlier. The rattle-snake. Or, more specifically, the Copper Back rattle-snake, which Jude sees upon Sula when she(Sula) returns. Morrison specifically calls the rattle-snake a Copper-back. And, as I have previously stated, the Copper Backs were the insidious Northern Democrats, during the Civil War, who wanted to join the Confederates. Abraham Lincoln called these people, "The greatest danger to the preservation of the Union." For Morrison uses the specification to foreshadow (though admittedly not very far forward), Sula's danger to the union between Jude and Nel.
Evan Jones
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Monina and Ian, however I am choosing to talk about the color of Sula's birthmark, something that was not mentioned in the question. In the beginning of the book, Morrison states that "The birthmark was to grow darker as the years past, but now it was the same shade as her gold-flecked eyes, which, to the end, were steady and clean as rain" (Morrison 53). This detail of the birthmark, often overlooked, is actually very important because of what it symbolizes. As Sula get's older, she is consumed more and more with evil, resulting in the "scary black thing" that Nel's children see. However, when she was young, Sula was just as innocent as her peers, which was demonstrated with the "clean as rain" color of her birthmark.
Sula’s birthmark holds much weight in terms of significance to the story. Just as Sula within Medallion, her birthmark has a stigma with the people around her. As for the town of Medallion, it has seemed to identify the meaning of her birthmark by saying that “it was Hannah’s ashes marking her from the very beginning” (Morrison 11). This reference to Hannah is how her lifestyle and mentality have been passed down to Sula, as Sula is starting to have the same reputation around the town as her mother. Sula is integral to the story because she shows a great contrast as to what is expected of people during her time to how she deals with the expectations of her community and time period. As for the change of symbols, each step from “rose” to “rattlesnake” demonstrates the steady decline in how her character is perceived to the community. Sula goes from a community who takes pity on her because of her mother’s death, to an evil that must be eradicated when she starts to sleep with every man in town. This symbol of a birthmark is Morrison’s way of identifying the true perception of her character as she does turn into a snake by sleeping with most of the husbands, from her innocent childhood like “rose” mentality. Throughout that change the community needed different ways to identify who she is as a person through each of those stages and they did that by how the birthmark looked to them.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with Monina's comments about Sula's dishonesty and superficiality. Morrison states explicitly that "social conversation was impossible for [Sula] because she could not lie"(121). The inhabitants of Medallion mistakens her lack of social conventions as dishonesty or treachery. This ties back to the the epigraph, an excerpt from the play, The Rose Tattoo. The people of Medallion only see her appearance, her birthmark and judge her by her personality as perceived by them. No one sees her "rose of the world" and neither do they "want glory like" Sula's. They refuse to understand her "glory" because it is unconventional and unpredictable, as Sula is a very unpredictable character with extremely unnatural desires. Thus, in their intentional ignorance (although their ignorance is largely aided by no other than Sula herself since she feels no obligation to explain herself), the townspeople brand her as evil and project their own interpretation of her birthmark on her. For example, to Nel's children her birthmark is a “the scary black thing”(97) because their childhood innocence deprives them of the ability to judge her by social conventions and thus only sees the birthmark as something they don't understand with an innocently insulting manner. The women see "Hannah's ashes"(14) in her birthmark because they chose to view her as a harbinger of death and "the source of...misfortune"(117). In reality, Sula's birthmark might just be a product of normal biological processes, hyperpigmentation of a birthmark from unprotected exposure to sun as well as age.
ReplyDeleteIt is my belief that the birthmark is sort of like the red "A" that Hester Prynne is forced to wear in the Scarlet Letter in that they reflect the impressions that others have upon the wearer. In the beginning, it is seen as a stemmed rose reflecting the beauty and innocence she exuded then. She is looked upon with the lustful eyes full of desire at her elegance, but as she grows older it slowly deteriorates into a copper back rattlesnake and Hannah's ashes, which reflects the more sinister side of Sula that has emerged. Also, as the incidents with Teapot and Mr. Finley lower the town's opinion of her, the comparison of her birthmark to cursed ashes only proves that mob ideology can disfigure something as beautiful as a rose into something as unsightly as the ashes of the dead.
ReplyDeleteSula's birthmark has many different names to different people because it is what people in the Medallion see in her. For example, to Nel, it looks like a stemmed rose because she sees Sula as this radiant and glowing strong force, but to the women in the Medallion, it looks like Hannah's ashes because of how they perceive her as a promiscuous sexual deviant who takes after her mother's similar behavior. Like those psychology tests where they show you a picture of an organically shaped blob, it is the interpretation of the individual of how they feel about Sula. When people usually look at those pictures of a blob, it is an interpretation of what they feel, and since birthmarks do not have a definite shape like a tattoo, there is an endless possibility of what that birthmark is. But, Morrison does not decide to illustrate a single mark because she wants to show how round and ambiguous Sula's character is.
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