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Sula's Difference: The Journey Of The Birthmark

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Sula’s Difference; The Journey of the Birtmark
Edward Siu
Mr. Boskovich
Period 1
03/06/2023
In the novel Sula, written by Toni Morrison, Sula Peace’s most obvious physical characteristic is her blaring birthmark immediately above her eyes, with the birthmark being intimidating and frightening even, yet exotic and enticing as it grows darker growing older, seemingly representing her age, maturity and growing sadness; the very things she is trying to fight against with all her might, which proves to be essentially impossible as more variables prevent her from doing so as her mark gets darker. The people of Bottom mark Sula as evil, while other characters have difference interpretations: a rose, a snake, and a tadpole. Sula was born with a …show more content…

First, Teapot “turned around” when “Sula said no” and “fell down the steps”, causing him to get a fracture, plus Mr. Finley choking “on a [chicken] bone and [dying] on the spot” (Morrison 114). The coincidences with Sula being at both of the unfortunate scenes make the people of Bottom to link her with evil, which becomes more tenous and proving that the people of Bottom are desperate to blame their troubles on some external source; they are blaming Sula for nonsense, like an old man choking on food. Then, Sula meets Nel’s husband, Jude, who thought her birthmark a “[stinging] rattle snake over her eye” which is softened from her wide smile (Morrison 104). To Jude, Sula’s birthmark is something that at first seems like something evil or ugly, but it also represents a phallic sign for Jude’s immediate attraction to Sula; snakes symbolize temptations of sin, and later foreshadows the “sin” that Jude commits by having an affair with Sula. Finally, when Sula succumbs from some disease, Shadrack seems to remember Sula as that “same little-girl face, same tadpole over the eye”, and then says “‘always’” to comfort Sula young self, that she does not need to worry about the changes of her face (Morrison 157-158). Incidentally, Sula’s birthmark is the proof that she was the “little girl” Shadrack remember–the mark can look like anything: a rose, a snake, or a tadpole. Furthermore, Shadrack was the only character to

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