As before: find a quotation that supports you position, true or false, and briefly explain. Do only one of the questions.
T or F:
1. The Ajax-Sula lover-relationship helps her grow and develop as a person.
OR
2. Ajax and Sula are similar in some ways.
OR
3. In the conversation with Sula, Nel shows herself to be her mother's daughter (i.e. she acts as her mother Helene might have).
OR
4. In the conversation with Nel, Sula's remarks are connected to the passage on p. 12o about the spider web, the snake, and the free fall.
28 comments:
2. T: Ajax and Sula are similar in some ways.
"In her words, in her voice was a sound he knew well. For the first time he saw the green ribbon. He looked around and saw the gleaming kitchen and the table set for two and detected the scent of the nest. Every hackle on his body rose, and he knew that very soon she would, like all of her sisters before her, put to him the death-knell question, 'Where you been?'"
and
"...only to discover that she and Nel were not the same thing. She had no thought at all of causing Nel pain when she bedded down with Jude...She knew well enough what other women said and felt, or said they felt. But she and Nel had always seen through them. They both knew that those women were not jealous of other women; they were afraid of losing their jobs. Afraid their husbands would discover that no uniqueness lay between their legs...Now Nel was one of them."
Both are disappointed by another, who they had thought could be counted on to match their own bourgeois-defying attitude.
1: T The Ajax- Sula relationship does help Sula to grow. It seems to be the first time a man actually has the power to cause her pain. She actually misses him,and enjoys being with him. "An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to udnerstand how she ahd ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence."
I disagree with Julie, after reading the whole section and all that Sula says at first to Nel, "Why? I can do it all, why can't I have it all?" She had a relationship with Ajax which she actually began to take seriously for the first time with anything. However, when he left her, Sula doesn't seem to have changed at all in her mentality. She still has the carefree, "I want everything" attitude even after going through such a devastating loss.
I agree with both julie and catherine. There is a definitely evidence to show that Sula has changed. she becomes attached to ajax and ii think that it scares here a little. for once, she is becoming dependent on someone, and when he leaves, she is torn up.
"His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on the table tops."
When Sula is with ajax, she gets used to his presence and shows signs of possibly wanting a relationship.
Where i agree with Christine, is where im not completely sure if she has "grown." i don't think she really changed after this unique experience. She was way out of character when ajax leaves her because she begins to feel lonely, but during the conversation later with Nel, she springs back to her old self. i think that she was afraid of her own emotions and instead of possibly becoming a normal woman with feelings, she backed away completely into the complete opposite direction or independence.
In conclusion, she didn't grow, but she did change.
T: ajax and Sula are similar in some ways.
"Ajax blinked. Then he looked swiftly into her face. In her words, in her voice was a sound he knew well..... Every hackle on his body rose , and he knew that very soon she would, like all her sisters before her put to him the death kneel question 'where you been?'"
Ajax realizes that Sula is beginning to become attached to him and he does not like that in the same way that sula doesn't want to know the name of the men she sleeps with. She doesn't want to get attached or become part of the web (the women who fall for men). It is unavoidable that she is becoming attached but because she let ajax see it he leaves her.
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F: Nel does not let herself act as Helene's daughter.
"'I always understood how you could take a man, now I understand why you can't keep one.'"
These words of Nel's do not sound anything like Helene's. Helene was demure, proper, and would never say something so blunt and "dirty" out loud. Helene would not say how she actually felt. Although Nel has curtailed her behavior a little bit, she is still saying things that would make Helene's blood curdle if she were to hear it like talking about the promiscuity of another woman to her face.
T: The Ajax-Sula relationship helps Sula to grow as a person.
I agree with Julie in that the Sula-Ajax relationship definitely helps Sula to grow. She does actually love him and care for him. She misses him intensely. He is a part of her that has left. She believes his presence is still there haunting her. Sula came to life with him. Before he came into her so called "life", Sula didn't really enjoy life as much and was definitely not happy and content, but then when he came into her life, She was so happy.
"His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence."
"It was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured[...] him..."
True, the Ajax relationship helps Sula grow. Sula begins to realize that for once, she does not have the power in this relationship. She is so used to getting what she wants in terms of relationships with men, yet it is definitely a growing process for her to understand that she isn't going to get everything she wants. People always grow in times of realization, and I believe that the circumstances surrounding this relationship are perfect circumstances in which Sula begins to grow as a person.
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I agree with Cooper and Rosie
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True! Sula grows from her realtionship with Ajax
"It was if she were afraid she had hallucinated him and needed proof to the contrary. his absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops."
Sula can recognize the physical and mental effect he had on her and her surroundings. That effect regardless of what the actual effect is, is growth.
T: The conversation between Sula and Nel is connected to the passage about the spider and snake.
Sula says, "I don't know everything, I just do everything."
"Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world."
In this reading it seems very much like Sula is trying to tell Nel that it's okay- she didn't mean anything by sleeping with her husband. She did it on a whim, the way you're supposed to live life. Not caring about "being good" to someone and them "being good" back, or caring about societal matters and such.
"If we were such good friends, how come you couldn't get over it?"
Although Sula is still talking about living for the free fall, I still kind of get the feeling that she is maybe a little sad, especially because of this last passage:
"and Sula upstairs in Eva's bed with a boarded-up window and an empty pocketbook on the dresser."
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checking in...i agree with Todd's comment about Nel's difference from her mother.
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True the passage is connected with the spider reference.
"But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I'm going down like one of those red woods. I sure did live in this world."
The stump is like the middle special class. They are like a stump, afraid to move and stuck in one place and therefore are going to dye a boring death and have a boring life. They are the spider who is stuck on the web. Whereas Sula is the spider in between the web and the snake. She has an exciting life, filled with taking action and experimenting and observing. She might have a short life, but exciting one. Rather than the special middle class who are going to have a long but boring life.
I chose question 4, but I tried to look for evidence (of the spider web) that could be found in the entire chapter(s).
"She sat on the edge of the bed thinking, "There aren't any more new songs and I have sung all the ones there are...""
- When Nel wakes up from her dream, she realizes that she feels like she knows everything she needs to know, or that she's absorbed all that she can. In one way, this can come from staying on the web. Although new flies come every now and then, they are all very similar. I connect the songs to the flies; all songs are different and so are flies but the same type of song or fly gets very tedious after a while.
T: The Ajax-Sula lover-relationship helps her grow and develop as a person.
"Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence. An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence." (134)
This passage is right after the line describing about how Ajax made love to her steady, like a man about to leave. What's remarkable about Sula's reaction to after he has left, to the brief interaction they shared, is that she notices his absence, that he had some sort of effect on her. Before she was always the one to leave, to be bored, to find people trival and all the same. With Ajax his presence - his voice, his body, his touch - is memorable and, in fact, one that is missed.
And Sula, while having sex with men, delves into the deeper sadness she doesn't deal with in that moment, the sadness lingers on to spread beyond that moment and it makes - as the text says - difficult for her to deal with. I think this spreading is a way that Sula is growing, maybe morally, but certainly in the scope of her relationships with men.
T :
1. The Ajax-Sula lover-relationship helps her grow and develop as a person.
"His absence was everywhere"
I agree with Audrey in the way that Sula might have become scared that she was becoming so dependent on a man.
But she might also be afraid that she's conforming to this idea that she used to have (we discussed this on the previous blog).
It's a bit too out there to be saying this, but that's the first thing I thought of.
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- Checking in (its been about an hour) -
Eh..short blog tonight, but what can you do? You can't win 'em all! Plus, lifes too short, but live by the motto:
Live, Laugh, Love, BLOG!!!!!!!!
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and i disagree with Cooper when he said that Sula was in love with ajax. She definitely sexually attracted to him, but i do not think that she ever loved him. If she did, how could she have turned back into her old self again?
T: The relationship with Ajax helps Sula grow.
"Sula began to discover what possession was...she stood before the mirror finger-tracing the laugh lines around her mouth and trying to decide whether she was good-looking or not. She ended this deep perusal by tying a green ribbon in her hair."
Her relationship with Ajax is what allows Sula to develop some self-consciousness. For the first time, she feels like she needs Ajax, as supposed to just using him for a momentary high. For the first time, she feels vulnerable. This shocks her, and normally insecurity is a bad thing, but it the only time we see Sula exhibiting the normal nervousness of wanting someone to like her. She acts like a flawed, passionate, feeling, individual; as supposed to someone who has no need for intimacy.
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