Essay Assignment 1: Documented Literary Analysis
Your literary analysis essay will be on the novel Sula by Toni Morrison. You can choose from any of the topics listed below (recommended) or explore further topics in the chapter on Sula, in the book How to Write about Toni Morrison (linked here for your convenience).
Your literary analysis should be between 2 ½ and 3 pages (600 to 750 words), not including the Works Cited page, should be double spaced in Times New Roman 12-point font.
Choose any ONE of the following 10 topics:
1. Analyze the ending of the novel. What are the “circles of sorrow” that Nel experiences? Is the ending pessimistic, optimistic, or something else altogether?
2. Nel and Sula’s friendship is central in the novel. As children, the girls develop their self-concept through the friendship. When they are adults, Nel feels betrayed when Sula sleeps with Jude, but Sula has also felt betrayed by Nel during the Chicken Little incident. How did Nel betray Sula as regards Chicken Little’s death and what is the significance of this mutual betrayal in their lives?
3. How do people who are intensely individualistic fare in the novel? Is it possible to break away from the values of the community and to be one’s own person Answer the question with reference to at least two of the novel’s characters.
4. How and by whom is love expressed in the novel? In what ways does the love in the novel ease the suffering of the characters? How is love not enough to diminish the suffering of the characters? Answer the question by discussing at least two characters in the novel.
5. In what ways are the various characters in the novel alienated from the community? How do they cope with their loneliness, their preoccupations, and other effects of feeling alienated?
6. Compare and contrast the journey of self-discovery for two characters in the book. Remember to take a position in your argument that establishes the significance of the comparison and contrast.
7. Contrast Nel’s relationship to her mother and Sula’s interaction with her mother. Remember to take a position in your argument that establishes the significance of the contrast.
8. Trace the use of three symbols in the novel and explain their connection to a theme in the novel.
9. What does Shadrack’s character teach us about the effects of war and the ways mentally ill people can be ostracized from a community?
10. Although no one has ever joined Shadrack on National Suicide Day, in the chapter titled “1941,” much of the town marches toward the tunnel where they have not been able to work, and, in their rage, they try to “kill, as best they could, the tunnel they were forbidden to build” (160). What is the significance of the event at the tunnel and the resulting deaths there?
