Document Type
Article
Abstract
Critics of Sula frequently comment on the pervasive presence of death, the uses of a particular cultural and historical background, the split or doubled protagonist (Sula/Nel), and the attention to chronology in the novel. However, as far as I am aware, no one has presented a reading of Sula that explores the interrelatedness of these elements; yet it is the connections among them that most usefully reveal the novel's overall thematic patterns. Sula can be, and has been, read as, among other things, a fable, a lesbian novel, a black female bildungsroman, a novel of heroic questing, and an historical novel that captures a crucial change in black patterns of living;1 all these modes are certainly discernable in the text. One approach that has not been taken is to read Sula as a war novel or, more precisely, as an anti-war novel.
Source
Excerpted From:
Source Data
Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 22, No. 1, Black Women Writers Issue (Spring, 1988), pp. 29-45
Rights Management
St. Louis University
Citation
Reddy, M.T. (1988). The Tripled Plot and Center of Sula. Black American Literature Forum, 22(1), 29-45. https://doi.org/10.2307/2904148
Included in
African American Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, Women's Studies Commons