So, how do I feel about the ending?!?!? Needless to say I am not very surprised. At this point, arent we all expecting to have some messed up someone killed someone and then pissed on the grave ending?? The questions that are left up in the air at the end of every single novel we read, is really starting to get to me. But anywho, on to this novel…
The whole tunnel thing where practically half the village dies, is symbolic in so many ways. We find out toward the end of the novel that the white people are starting to take interest in the Bottom. Wanting to build their big houses up on the hill and whatnot. The people from the Bottom dying in something that white man built shows several things. One, that well if half the people in the Bottom are gone, that leave plenty of room for the whites to move in. So in a way it was “mother natures” way of making room for the superior race. Even during the time of the civil rights movement. Two, Its another way of mother nature taking out the weaker people. A cruel way of looking at survival of the fittest. After Sula dies, all the women start cheating again and beating their kids and so on. Well, all of them dying in the tunnel is a way of riding the world of the “monsters” that prevailed before and after Sula. And third, the white people would not let the backs help with the tunnel because the whites were better and stronger blah blah blah. Well what a kawinkie dink that something that is supposed to be so strong and superior ends up killing tons of people. Oh the irony.
I have one last thing to say……. HOW ABOUT CHANGING IT UP A BIT!!! These canonical authors are so predictible. I dare a canonical author to boggle my mind and change it up a bit. Do something that we wouldnt predict. Thank you and goodnight!
April 13, 2007 at 1:57 pm
I never thought of that idea about the tunnel and mother nature killing out the weaker race like survival of the fittest. I agree that Sula was the glue that kept everyone sticking together and acting normal but when she dies then all hell breaks loose.
April 13, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I think it’s more important to note that if it was so superior it wouldn’t have crumbled at all. And that Bottom used to be so bad, and suddenly everbody wants to live there. It’s like, “We kind gave this to you because it sucked, but we kinda want it now because we changed our minds.” There’s a lot not knowing what you till it’s gone, going on in this novel.
April 30, 2007 at 2:36 am
I would also have to agree with you on this and challenging the author’s to change it up…….maybe that is why i’m not too intrested in this genre of literature because it is so predictable. For most of the books we’ve read this semester you can pretty much tell there is going to be a messed up relationship in there somewhere, at least one death, some family turmoil, and so on. I would ask why not have a happy ending and let a least one of these characters live happily ever after, but, then it wouldn’t be in the canon it would probably be in the fairy tale genre or something.