By Grace Colby
Can a person be as deadly as nightshade or as harmless as blackberry? Toni Morrison’s Sula explores this question, as an image of blackberries and nightshade opens the novel. While the plants may look similar, one nourishes while the other poisons. In the novel, Morrison links the two protagonists, Nel and Sula, to characteristics of these fruits. Sula appears to be the toxic nightshade while Nel is the sweet blackberry; however, Morrison then sets out to dismantle this binary. Although on the surface it seems that Sula is fundamentally evil while Nel is fundamentally good, a close reading of Sula reveals that their characters are far too complex to conform to a simple good-and-evil dichotomy.
The pairing of blackberries and nightshade is established in the initial sentence in Sula, by beginning with this description of a “place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, [where] there was once a neighborhood” (Sula 4). In “Unspeakable Things Unspoken,” Morrison describes the symbolism of nightshade and blackberries: “[b]oth plants have darkness in them: ‘black’ and ‘night.’ One is unusual (nightshade) and has two darkness words: ‘night’ and ‘shade.’ The other (blackberry) is common. A familiar plant and an exotic one. A harmless one and a dangerous one. One produces a nourishing berry; one delivers toxic ones” (153). While blackberries nourish, nightshade kills. The mirroring of blackberries and nightshade symbolizes not only good and evil, but more specifically the characters of Nel and Sula. On the surface, Nel appears to be good: the refreshing blackberry. Sula, on the other hand, appears to be evil: the deadly nightshade.
At first glance, Sula embodies the unconventional and evil, which is represented by noxious nightshade. Monika Hoffarth-Zelloe furthers this argument by noting that “[n]ightshade is an unusual, exotic, and dangerous plant, delivering a toxic poison; It foreshadows the wild and dangerously free Sula with her paradoxical character—the berries taste bitter at first and then sweet” (115). Sula is described as a woman who is not concerned with conforming to societal standards, as she “...lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, to feel pleasure as to give pleasure, hers was an experimental life” (Sula 118). Due to Sula’s tendency to disregard social conventions, her actions oftentimes harm others, just as nightshade poisons those who eat it. She is described as “dangerous” and a “pariah” (Sula 121, 122). Her wickedness is exemplified when she witnesses her mother burning alive and “wanted her to keep jerking like that, to keep on dancing” (Sula 147). Sula’s most wicked act, however, may be the betrayal of her best friend Nel. After ten years, Sula comes back home to Medallion, Ohio, where Nel still resides. Sula sleeps with Nel’s husband, which destroys Nel’s relationship with both her husband and Sula. In all of these villainous actions, Sula appears to be the epitome of evil, the true nightshade.
However, Sula’s character is far too complex to be confined to the simplistic label of evil. Sula proves herself to be a woman capable of deeper affection and attachment through her relationship with Ajax. While she has no prior attachment to any man she slept with, as she saw sex as “wicked,” Ajax teaches her “what possession [is]” (Sula 123, 131). She finds comfort and contentment with one man, which is what her best friend Nel has always searched for. Ajax begins to consume all of her time and thoughts. When he notices that she has fallen in love with him and has begun to make him a priority, he leaves in fear of that emotional attachment. He has changed her into a woman who is capable of love, and her world shifts when he leaves. Sula is left with “[a]n 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” (Sula 134). For the first time, she allows herself to be truly vulnerable with Ajax, which has led to heartbreak. Sula is capable of genuine love, deepfelt heartbreak, and emotional vulnerability, which points to the goodness in her. Instead of conforming to the binary of wholly wicked or entirely pure, Sula becomes a three-dimensional human character with the capability of both.
While Sula is perceived as nightshade, Nel is seen as a blackberry. Unlike Sula, Nel conforms to societal standards. She does not have Sula’s fire or individuality, rather the words “‘blackberry patch’ seemed...appropriate for Nel: nourishing, never needing to be tended or cultivated, once rooted and bearing” (“Unspeakable Things Unspoken” 153). Nel is seen as the righteous and refreshing character; therefore, she embodies the blackberry patch. The book describes Nell as having “...no aggression, her parents had succeeded in rubbing down to a dull glow any sparkle or sputter she ever had” (Sula 83). She settles down into a life of marriage and motherhood, casting “...her visions in traditional romantic fantasies and sacrifices her independence to conventionality...” (Stein 52). While Sula lives by her own emotions and desires, Nel stifles her emotions to live a quiet, conventional life. On the surface, Nel is the sweet, nourishing blackberry.
Blackberry patches, however, are rife with thorns. When one looks below the surface, they will find that Nel is not faultless. If the novel adhered strictly to juxtaposing Sula’s toxicity with Nel’s purity, Nel would be expected to embody goodness. A clear example of Nel’s wickedness is her reaction to the death of Chicken Little. When Nel watches Sula accidentally swing Chicken Little into the water, which causes his death, Nel shows no emotion. She only shows fear of being caught; while Sula “...collapsed in tears” over the death of Chicken Little, Nel remains stoic and controlled, not shedding a single tear (Sula 62). At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Nel felt a sick, twisted pleasure in watching Chicken Little die, as it gave her a “good feeling” (Sula 170). Nel reveals that “[a]ll these years she had been secretly proud of her calm, controlled behavior when Sula was uncontrollable.... Now it seemed that what she had thought was maturity, serenity and compassion was only the tranquility that follows a joyful stimulation” (Sula 170). While one may read Nel’s stoicism in the wake of Chicken Little’s death as shock, it is actually a wicked combination of excitement and contentment, which exemplifies that the concepts of “good” and “evil” are more complex than a binary allows. One is not exclusively innocent or wicked, as every good person is capable of evil. Even the sweetest blackberries come with thorns.
Toni Morrison exposes the limitations of binaries and refuses to be held back by them. She does not put her characters into boxes marked “good” or “evil,” because they are far too complex for that. While Sula may appear to be the malignant nightshade and Nel the benign blackberry, both characters refuse to remain within the confines of those roles. When Sula betrays Nel, it is tempting to mark Sula as corrupt and Nel as morally upright; however, “...Morrison clearly wants us to recognize that although Nel and Sula appear to be quite different—one the epitome of goodness and one the embodiment of evil—they are also quite similar” (Bergenholtz 92). It is not only Sula who finds pleasure or excitement in the death of another person. If watching her mother die “because she was interested” makes Sula evil, “then Nel is also evil for experiencing a sense of pleasure and tranquility when Chicken Little disappears beneath the water” (Sula 78; Bergenholtz 92). All people have both good and evil in them, and Nel and Sula are no exception. Because they are complex characters with the capability to both nourish and poison, Nel and Sula dismantle the good and evil binary, showing readers what it means to be real, authentic human beings.
While Sula appears only to embody the fatal nightshade, she also contains a touch of the sweet blackberry. Nel may seem to be the nutritious fruit; however, she still retains some toxicity. In Toni Morrison’s Sula, these binaries are broken by making Sula and Nel complex characters who cannot be confined to categories such as virtuous or villainous. It is essential that we do not hold ourselves back by clinging to binaries such as the dichotomy of good and evil. Just as Morrison does with Sula and Nel, we must look past perceived surface-level innocence or wickedness to see other human beings in all their complexities. As she dismantles the binary of blackberries and nightshade, Morrison makes a poignant argument that it is harmful to confine women into boxes based on conventional standards of purity, marking them with harmful labels if they do not fit into society’s stereotype of a domestic, angelic woman.
Works Cited
Bergenholtz, Rita A. “Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Satire on Binary Thinking.” African American
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Hoffarth-Zelloe, Monika. “Resolving the Paradox?: An Interlinear Reading of Toni Morrison’s
‘Sula.’” The Journal of Narrative Technique, vol. 22, no. 2, Apr. 1992, pp. 114–
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“Beloved” & “Sula”: Selected Essays & Criticisms, 2000, pp. 49–60. EBSCOhost,
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