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this family includes people
who do what they want, but
their actions have
consequences.
Boyboy’s actions were not restrained, which led him to a bad relationship with Eva that he eventually left. Like Eva, Boyboy’s independence led him down the wrong way.
After five years of a sad and disgruntled marriage BoyBoy took off. During the time they were together he was very much preoccupied with other women and not home much. He did whatever he could that he liked, and he liked womanizing best, drinking second, and abusing Eva third. When he left in November, Eva had $1.65, five eggs, three beets and no idea of what or how to feel.
Pearl married at fourteen and moved to Flint, Michigan, from where she posted frail letters to her mother with two dollars folded into the writing paper.
While not much about Pearl is said, the state of her letters hints that her life isn’t going the best it could. Her decision to marry at fourteen reflects on the type of parenting she received from Eva.
No one told Eva that burning people alive was morally wrong, especially her son. She even tries to justify it. This is an example of a person who was given too much independence and not enough guidance. The lack of balance can give people a warped perspective on what’s right and wrong.
Eva stepped back from the bed and let the crutches rest under her arms. She rolled a bit of newspaper into a tight stick about six inches long, lit it and threw it onto the bed where the kerosene-soaked Plum lay in snug delight. Quickly, as the whoosh of flames engulfed him, she shut the door and made her slow and painful journey back to the top of the house.
I done everything I could to make him leave me and go on and live and be a man but he wouldn’t and I had to keep him out so I just thought of a way he could die like a man not all scrunched up inside my womb, but like a man.
Hannah seems to have no problem toying with women’s emotions by cheating with their husbands. Her beliefs as a result of the freedom she was given are significant, because her daughter will most likely grow up to have similar ones.
Hannah simply refused to live without the attentions of a man, and after Rekus’ death had a steady sequence of lovers, mostly the husbands of her friends and neighbors.
Hannah exasperated the women in the town—the “good” women, who
said, “One thing I can’t stand is a nasty woman”
Hannah’s friendships with women were, of course, seldom and short-lived, and the newly married couples whom her mother took in soon learned what a hazard she was. She could break up a marriage before it had even become one—she would make love to the new groom and wash his wife’s dishes all in an afternoon. What she w
anted, after Rekus died, and what she succeeded in having more often than not, was some touching every day.
Sula is interesting, because this quote defies the emerging pattern in the Peace family. She prefers the Wright’s organized house to hers. Even if there is a general lack of middle ground between conformity and freedom, Sula demonstrates it. This is significant because she could exhibit these traits in the future.
When Sula first visited the Wright house, Helene’s curdled scorn turned to butter. Her daughter’s friend seemed to have none of the mother’s slackness. Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comfortable in it with Sula, who loved it and would sit on the red-velvet sofa for ten to twenty minutes at a time—still as dawn.
Hannah married a laughing man named Rekus who died when their daughter Sula was about three years old, at which time Hannah moved back into her mother’s big house prepared to take care of it and her mother forever.
Rekus is not mentioned much in the story, but his death forced Hannah to become more independent by making her move back to her mother’s house to care for her.
The Deweys refused to agree to what everyone else wanted from them, and their stoutheartedness was a sign of that. It’s ironic that what makes them different from everyone else is the fact that they try to be like each other, but nonetheless a sign of their non conformity.
She too thought she would have no problem distinguishing among them, because they looked nothing alike, but like everyone else before her, she gradually found that she could not tell one from the other. The deweys would not allow it. They got all mixed up in her head, and finally she could not literally believe her eyes. They spoke with one voice thought with one mind, and maintained an annoying privacy. Stouthearted, surly, and wholly unpredictable, the deweys remained a mystery not only during all of their lives in Medallion but after as well.
Plum left for about three years, and during that time he was free to do whatever he wanted. In this case, his freedom caused his bad habits and drug addiction, which eventually got him killed by his own mom.
Eva’s last child, Plum, to whom she hoped to bequeath everything, floated in a constant swaddle of love and affection, until 1917 when he went to war. He returned to the States in 1919 but did not get back to Medallion until 1920. He wrote letters from New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago full of promises of homecomings, but there was obviously something wrong. His habits were much like Tar Baby’s but there were no bottles, and Plum was sometimes cheerful and animated.
Hannah watched and Eva waited. Then he began to steal from them, take trips to Cincinnati and sleep for days in his room with the record player going. He got even thinner, since he ate only snatches of things at beginning or endings of meals. It was Hannah who found the bent spoon black from steady cooking.
Tar Baby lives in the Peace household, and he fits right in. With no rules limiting him, he spends his days drinking himself to sleep. This is proof that the lack of control and discipline Tar Baby has gotten throughout his life leads to an undesirable lifestyle.
He was a mountain boy who stayed to himself, bothering no one, intent solely on drinking himself to death. At first he worked in a poultry market, and after wringing the necks of chickens all day, he came home and drank until he slept. Later he began to miss days at work and frequently did not have his rent money. When he lost his job altogether, he would go out in the morning, scrounge around for money doing odd jobs, bumming or whatever, and come home to drink.
the Wright family is strict
and conservative in their
ways of thinking, which will affect them
Rochelle is painted as the idea of what not to be like in the Wright household, and is shunned for it. Cecile’s conservative ideas have rubbed off on Helene, who shames Rochelle in front of her daughter, Nel. Cecile’s control has extended through two generations, which is far from the definition of independence. That is significant, because Rochelle will be separated from the rest of her family, because of an opinion one person has.
“She smelled so nice. And her skin was so soft.”
Helene rinsed the cloth. “Much handled things are always soft.”
“What does ‘vwah’ mean?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “I don’t talk Creole.” She gazed at her daughter’s wet buttocks. “And neither do you.”
He stood there staring at her until she realized that he wanted her to move aside. Pulling Nel by the arm, she pressed herself and her daughter into the foot space in front of a wooden seat. Then, for no earthly reason, at least no reason that anybody could understand, certainly no reason that Nel understood then or later, she smiled. Like a street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments before, Helene smiled.
If there was one quote in this project that could sum up a lack of freedom, it would be this one. Helene is letting herself be mistreated by the white conductor, and the fact that she’s willing enough to smile emphasizes how conforming she is. Not being able to stand up for herself is something that will not help her.
Like Sula, Nel also displays behavior that is unlike her mother’s. She wants to be her own person, not just a product of her mother. She liked the more relaxed feeling of Sula’s home. However, Nel does not fall on the extreme ends of the spectrum like some characters, because her independence is shown in a positive way. This connection to the theme proves that Nel may turn out to be one of the more rational characters in the book.
I’m me,” she whispered. “Me.”
Nel didn’t know quite what she meant,
but on the other hand she knew
exactly what she meant.
“I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.”
Each time she said the word
me
there was a gathering in her like power,
like joy, like fear.
As for Nel, she preferred Sula’s woolly house, where a pot of something was always cooking on the stove; where the mother, Hannah, never scolded or gave directions; where all sorts of people dropped in; where newspapers were stacked in the hallway,and dirty dishes left for hours at a time in the sink, and where a one-legged grandmother named Eva handed you goobers from deep inside her pockets or read you a dream.
Cecile is the beginning of the Wright family dynamic. She was so insistent on raising Helene her own way, that she took her from her own mother. Right from birth, Helene’s life was already being dictated by her grandmother. Helene had no say in who she wanted to take care of her; she lacked the right to choose.
Helene was born behind those shutters, daughter of a Creole whore who worked there. The grandmother took Helene away from the soft lights and flowered carpets of the Sundown House and raised her under the dolesome eyes of a multicolored Virgin Mary, counseling her to be constantly on guard for any sign of her mother’s wild blood.
Wiley is hardly seen in the book, but he still enforces the Wright family dynamic. His absences are significant because they allow Helene to control the house without disruption.
His long absences were quite bearable for Helene Wright, especially when, after some nine years of marriage, her daughter was born. Her daughter was more comfort and purpose than she had ever hoped to find in this life.