Sula by Toni Morrison: The Meaning of the Ending
This essay analyzes the conclusion of Toni Morrison's novel Sula, focusing on the emotional breakdown experienced by Nel and what it reveals about the relationship between the two central characters. The paper argues that Nel and Sula represent two incomplete but complementary identities available to Black women — the maternal and the sexual — and that neither woman is whole without the other. Drawing on textual evidence and secondary scholarship, the essay explores key incidents including the death of Chicken Little and Sula's seduction of Jude, situating them within the novel's overarching theme of guilt, judgment, and lost selfhood.
- Introduction: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Nel's breakdown reveals the two women's symbolic duality
- Nel and Sula as Contrasting Identities: Contrasting domestic Nel and restless, nature-linked Sula
- Sula's Seduction of Jude and the Circle of Guilt: Jude's seduction and Chicken Little's death bind the women
- Judgment, Isolation, and the Witch-Like Sula: Community and family judgment cast Sula as emotionless outsider
- Conclusion: The Circle of Sorrow and Mourning Lost Life: Nel mourns Sula and the self she never became
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a clear central metaphor — two sides of the same coin — and sustains it throughout, returning to the idea of duality at each stage of the argument.
- It integrates both primary textual evidence and peer-reviewed secondary sources (Nigro, Pruitt) to anchor interpretive claims, demonstrating appropriate scholarly support for a literary analysis.
- The essay moves logically from close reading of the novel's ending backward to formative incidents (Chicken Little, Hannah's death), building cumulative evidence for its thesis rather than summarizing plot.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper exemplifies thematic close reading: it identifies a single interpretive frame (the incomplete duality of Nel and Sula) and applies it consistently to multiple scenes and details — the blurring of "girlgirlgirl," the plague of robins, the accidental drowning, and the novel's final tone of irresolution. This technique shows how a unifying argument can illuminate disparate textual moments.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by establishing its central thesis at the novel's end, then moves chronologically through the novel's key events to support that thesis. Each paragraph addresses a distinct episode or symbolic motif, connecting it back to the argument about identity and incompleteness. The conclusion synthesizes these threads by emphasizing Nel's mourning not just for Sula but for the part of herself that Sula represented — a strong thematic payoff.
Introduction: Two Sides of the Same Coin
At the ending of Toni Morrison's Sula — a novel that focuses on the lives of two African American women, despite taking the name of only one of them as its title — the more conventional of the two women has an emotional breakdown. "We was girls together," says Nel, "girl, girl, girlgirlgirl" (Morrison 174). Although Sula was in many ways a terrible friend, stealing Nel's husband Jude from her and making a spectacle of herself in the community to the point of becoming a pariah, the ending suggests that the two women are essentially two sides of the same coin, neither complete. They represent two available identities for Black women: either the highly sexualized Sula or the maternal Nel. But neither is whole without the other, as the blurring of the word "girl" suggests.
Nel and Sula as Contrasting Identities
This duality is evident from the very beginning, when Nel "relishes the casual disorder of Sula's household" as a child, even while in adulthood she is pressured to conform to her mother's dictates about cleanliness, chastity, and order (Nigro 727). Nel marries upon completing her schooling, but Sula, ever restless, goes off to college, seeking masculine attributes in the form of knowledge as well as men. Throughout the novel, Sula is portrayed as being closer to nature, "accompanied by a plague of robins" at one point, which leave bird droppings everywhere (Morrison 89). Sula represents dirt and desire — qualities that Nel attempts to reject, yet she continually finds herself drawn into Sula's orbit, even while refusing to embrace Sula's sexual availability as a model for herself.
Sula's Seduction of Jude and the Circle of Guilt
The fact that Sula seduces Jude is the event which ultimately and understandably causes a rift between the two women until the final poignant scene. Yet it can also be viewed as an attempt by Sula to possess all that Nel symbolizes and that she herself lacks — a husband, a stable home, and respectability. When the two of them were children, during one of the most traumatic incidents in the novel, the two girls accidentally participate in an event that results in a young boy named Chicken Little falling to his death. Sula was the one who lost her grip, so she blames herself, while Nel feels a sense of relief that it was not her fault. However, both girls were participating in the same action.
Once again, this highlights how the two women are part of the same enclosed circle of guilt, even though Nel tries to distance herself from blame, sexual desire, and involvement. Since the incident was accidental, none of the women were truly at fault. Nel's final memory of the girlhood they shared implicitly recalls this incident, even though throughout the novel she has periodically ascribed negative motives to her friend — both fairly and unfairly. This pattern of blame extends even to Sula's own grandmother, who believes that "Sula had watched Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested" (Morrison 78).
Conclusion: The Circle of Sorrow and Mourning Lost Life
The end of the novel lacks "healing closure," because Sula is dead and Nel can only mourn her friend's passing (Pruitt 116). Yet even more important than mourning Sula's death is the sense of mourning Nel's lost life. Unlike Sula, despite her resolve, Nel was never able to travel outside her hometown. She was never able to reconcile with Sula on an emotional level. The part of herself that Sula represented — as well as Sula's physical, sexual presence — will always be lost, creating the circle of sorrow that defines the novel. The ending does offer some hope, however, in that Nel is finally able to acknowledge and perceive the loss.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York, NY: Plume, 1973.
Nigro, Marie. "In Search of Self: Frustration and Denial in Toni Morrison's Sula." Journal of Black Studies, vol. 28, no. 6, Sage Publications, Inc., 1998, pp. 724–37,
Pruitt, Claude. "Circling Meaning in Toni Morrison's 'Sula.'" African American Review, vol. 44, no. 1/2, Indiana State University, Saint Louis University, African American Review, 2011, pp. 115–29,
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