The Rational Perspective – The Novel

Sula by Toni Morrison

            In many ways I believe the medium of the novel offers a vast platform in which the artist/author can express how the rational perspective is lived out in the lives of each individual.  If the philosopher can say, “Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.”  (Bronowski, p. 20), then it would be fair to say that the novel can be a re-creation of society.  The novel, therefore, can be used to reveal the rational perspective.  Through the wide scope of the novel the artist can not only define the rational perspective, but express all the nuances of the perspective as they effect each individual life.  The author can take the time to show how each person defines his or her own perspective, and ultimately lives his or her life in accordance with that perspective.

In her book “Sula” Toni Morrison attempts to express the variances in a specified or local society that are the result of a combination of culture and specific familial influences.  In doing so she, whether knowingly or unwittingly, uses the concept of the rational perspective to express why people behave the way they do.  Through Toni Morrison’s Sula we see how the rational perspective is an elusive concept; one that, although society at large attempts to set down rules for rational behavior, it is ultimately the individual who defines for him or herself what is and what is not rational.

            From the very beginning Morrison reveals the need of rational behavior.  That need is what Whitehead calls the  “function of Reason, [which] is to promote the art of life.” (Whitehead, p. 4)  Or, as he goes on to write, “(i) to live, (ii) to live well, (iii) to live better.” (Whitehead, p. 8)  As she introduces her story the narrator is reflecting on the changes in the town of Medallion and the suburbs now growing in the area formerly called the “Bottom.”  This is the change brought on under what we can term the rational perspective. 

Morrison at first seems to present the changes with little emotion, “ There will be nothing left of the Bottom…, but perhaps it is just as well, since it wasn’t a town anyway….”  Yet, as we read further into this introduction we get the sense that she is saying there is something quite noteworthy about this process.  The whole neighborhood of the Bottom seemed to be conceived, sustained, and eventually erased in irony.  Irony in the fact that the black people were shoved into the hills outside the city of Medallion, “…tucked up there in the Bottom.” (Morrison, p. 6)  These hills which eventually came to be coveted by the very white families that shoved the blacks there to begin with because they thought the hills were of no worth.  Irony in that the whites, who jokingly called this hilly area the bottom of heaven, thus its name, in an effort to convince the blacks, and probably assuage their twinges of guilt, that this was good land, eventually came to believe that these hills just might be the bottom of heaven after all. 

Irony in that the blacks no longer believed the land to be the bottom of heaven, but did not care.  They simply wanted to get on with life; trying to make sense of life.  This is what the rational perspective is; making everything make sense.  “The conduct of human affairs is entirely dominated by our recognition of foresight determining purpose, and purpose issuing in conduct.”  (Whitehead, p. 13) 

Our lives must make sense to us.  If it does not, then we have the tendency to reject some, if not all the realities of life, at least until it does make sense.  This is what Shadrack did.  None of what he encountered on the battlefields of France make sense to him.  He, therefore, had to reject it all, and literally put it out of his mind.  To make sense of it all there evolved in his mind the idea of National Suicide Day.  He needed to make some kind of adaptation to his environment in order to make sense of it – even if it made sense only to him.

The black community, as a whole, had become adept at compromising, or covering up reality, in the attempt to make some sense of their lives.  This was evident in their attitude about the Bottom.  It was evident in the way they eventually incorporated the odd behavior of Shadrack into their consciousness.  As with other things, if it did not fit Reason, but persisted then they simply, “…absorbed it into their thoughts, into their languages, into their lives.” (Morrison, p. 15)  It was easier for them to simply allow Shadrack to kind of melt into their society, than to acknowledge his peculiarities and help him with them.  It is as though Morrison was continuing to say that the people of the Bottom did not care, they just wanted to get on with life.  This might be what Whitehead meant when he wrote that, “Life-tedium is fatigue derived from a thwarted urge toward novel contrast.” (Whitehead, p. 20)

All of Morrison’s characters in Sula seem to have a unique view of the rational perspective.  The consistency, however, comes in the fact that most all this behavior is for some reason condoned by the culture of the Bottom society.  It may be the result of their attitude that they just want to get on with life; to figure life out on their own.  If this is true, then it makes sense that they would, for the most part, accept the way in which each individual has come to terms with his or her own life.

Even so, when behavior was unacceptable there was a price to pay.  What Morrison does, however, is reveal that what seems rational is, in truth, not.  And, what seems unreasonable is sometimes what is best and therefore rational.  Rational behavior, in other words, is not always what a society or culture would consider traditional behavior.  And, behavior, just because it is condoned, does not necessarily make that behavior reasonable.

To exhibit this contrast Morrison chooses two characters to be the heroines of the story.  We see that, although they became good friends, the fact that they were raised differently, they were able to rationalize the different lifestyles they chose as the got older.  Even though they were from the same society of the Bottom, the differences in their family life became the foundation for the differences in what they were able to accept as normal or rational behavior.

Both Nel and Sula came from families where the mother was the head of the household.  Nel’s father was gone because he worked a job that kept him on the Great Lakes most of the time.  She was never encouraged to better herself.  “Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground.” (Morrison, p. 18)  Later in the book we see that this squelching of Nel’s character ultimately led to a lifestyle consisting mostly of drudgery and false contentment.  In her quest to have her daughter lead a normal life Helene repressed any uniqueness in Nel’s personality.  Helene was subtly deceived by the notion that what works for one generation will work for all.  The result for anyone who felt this way was the continuation of a society content to live in the Bottom; wanting only to get on with life.  Not wishing to contemplate, or take the time to find out what else life had to offer.

As we saw with the scientist, creativity is necessary for change; for growth.  If the “…first step [of a new scientific study is] a leap of the imagination,” (Bronowski, p. 12) then the first step toward changing a society must also be within the realm of the imagination.  For a society to grow there must be someone willing to imagine how it could be better, then have the courage to take the steps necessary to make it better.  Nel’s imagination was driven underground.  Because of this she would never be able to leave the culture created in the Bottom.  And, she would never be able to fully understand how that culture should and could grow.

The culture of the Bottom no longer concerned itself with the main issues of black versus white.  When Helene smiles at the conductor who had just been very rude to her we get a glimpse of this cultural resignation.  “Like a street pup that wags its tail at the very doorjamb of the butcher shop he has been kicked away from only moments before.”  (Morrison, p. 21)  But we also get a sense that this resignation is located mostly in communities such as the Bottom.  The black soldiers on the train change from passive onlookers to disgusted viewers of this scene.  They have experienced the fact that in some areas at least, the black person need not totally humiliate themselves in front of the white person.  Their experience sees this as behavior that is not rational.  It belittles the blacks.  Helene, on the other hand, saw her behavior as rational because she just wanted to get away from the scene.  The main issues no longer exist.  She now only concerns herself, as does the Bottom society in general, in getting on with her life.  If being humble to the point of humiliation was what it took to get the conductor away from her, then so be it.

It is at this point the reader might assume that Nel, the contrasting heroine of the story, will be the one who will break out of her culture’s stagnation.  It is the readers hope that she will seize, “…upon one of the nascent methodologies concealed in the welter of miscellaneous experience beyond the scope of the old dominant way.”  (Whitehead, p. 19)  Nel was embarrassed by Helene’s behavior that day.  The opportunity was there to seize that experience as an excuse to change the old ways of her culture.  She obviously saw that their resignation was not worthy of their existence.  But for her, the choice was an unhappy choice.  “If the choice be happy, evolution has taken an upward trend: if unhappy, the oblivion of time covers the vestiges of a vanished race.” (Whitehead, p. 19)  For Nel life turned into a kind of oblivion.  All her dreams eventually disappeared, and she sunk into the culture that so ashamed her on this day.

In the person of Sula, however, the old way had reached its saturation point.  Sula, though seemingly taking the less than rational route out of the Bottom society, is actually the one who does begin to change the outlook of the Bottom’s cultural stagnation.  Sula, too, came from a home where the female was the dominant figure.  Her family life, however, was quite different from Nel’s.  Where Nel’s imagination was suppressed, Sula grew up in an environment where each person learned how to make sense of life in their own way.  Though they would never understand what it meant to say they had creative license, they were nonetheless allowed to explore life, and to experience new ways.  If one way did not work, then take another route.

Sula’s grandmother, Eva, lived a life that was the perfect example of this outlook.  When her husband left her with hungry children she tried all the old ways to keep them fed and warm, but they did not work.  So she struck out on her own, left the community for long enough to get enough money to come back and make a home for her family.  The implication is that she prostituted herself for awhile.  It does not matter what she did while gone.  What matters is that she took what on the surface appeared to be an irrational step to meet life’s needs.

But this too is what the rational perspective is about.  “The progress of science [and life] is the discovery at each step of a new order which gives unity to what had long seemed unlike.”  (Bronowski, p. 15)  If Eva did indeed resort to prostitution in order to pay for the family’s needs, then one might well argue that she was wrong.  But I do not believe this is Morrison’s point here.  I believe she left this a mystery on purpose so that we, the readers, would see that sometimes you must break away from the normal and accepted in order to meet the needs that is expected of you to provide.  Whatever method she used to get the money needed turned out to meet the same needs that were met by other people in other ways. 

Another important aspect of life Sula learned from her family was the way she regarded men.  “It was manlove that Eva bequeathed to her daughters….  The Peace women simply love maleness, for its own sake.”  So for Sula, loving men, all men, was acceptable and therefore rational behavior.  Hannah, Sula’s mother, extended this love mindset to include having sexual relationships with men.  But the important aspect of Hannah’s legacy to her daughter was that she distinguished between having sex, and sleeping with a man.  “She liked [making love in her bedroom] least…because of her love mate’s tendency [to] always fall asleep afterwards…She would fuck practically anything, but sleeping with someone implied for her a measure of trust and a definite commitment.” (Morrison, pp. 43-44)  As a result Sula’s impression of sex was that it “was pleasant and frequent, but otherwise unremarkable.”  (Morrison, p. 44)

Two people, Nel and Sula, from the same society, and basically the same culture, become best friends at an early age.  Something about the untraditional behavior of Sula attracts Nel.  Something about the consistency and stability of Nel’s behavior attracts Sula.  But neither one can break away from their heritage; from the legacy left to them by their families.  To each the rational perspective takes on a different meaning.

Whitehead writes, “In the stabilized life there is no room for Reason.”  (Whitehead, p. 20)  If he means by this that stability can lead to stagnation if the creative process is thereby thwarted, then Morrison has given a perfect expression through her novel just how this could happen.  Nel’s life seemed to be the stable life, but it also was the life that had little meaning.  Sula’s life, on the other hand, seemed destined for failure by society’s standards, but it was her life that the reader senses eventually brought meaning to the community. 

This feeling is wrapped up in Nel’s words upon the death of Sula.  She had been angry at Sula for many years because Sula had sex with Jude, Nel’s husband on their wedding day.  Morrison was careful to show that this meant nothing to Sula.  It was just happy sex with another man.  But, of course, it meant everything to Nel, who believed in the traditional ways, and promises, of marriage.  Jude would often leave Nel for Sula’s affections, and eventually leave her altogether, and Nel wound up missing him.  But in the end Nel realized what Sula had given her, or at least had tried to give her.  A more rational perspective on life.  “’All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.’ And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up in her throat….It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” (Morrison, p. 174)

Nel’s life was lived in accordance to her perspective.  Yet it may not have been as rational as tradition would have her believe.  The loud and long cry went in circles because it had no where to go.  There was no imagination available to grow from.  Sula was one hope for that society, or at least one person, Nel, to escape from the stagnation, and grow.

Morrison’s story, I believe was able to show that not only is the rational perspective a personal perspective, but it is also a cultural perspective.  Both must somehow come together if both the person and society want to grow.  If they do not they die.