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Joshua Savory
Prof. Leigh
English 102.103
20 November 17
Love in Sula
Love is the most powerful of all magic. It brings hope, beauty, unity, and joy into one’s
life. Also, it can bring pain and heartache if not nurtured, or if neglected. There are different
types of love. For example, the love between parents and children, which is unconditional, but
sometimes complicated. Then there is the kind for lovers and friends, which are built on getting
to know a person and accepting people for who they are. Regardless of the kind of love, it is still
powerful and emotionally connected. Love brings people together, and creates distance as well.
Love makes people feel like they are on top of the world, and then sometimes makes others want
to take their life. In Toni Morrison’s Sula, love can take on many forms and create many
characteristics for the characters. Love means different things for the characters including
possession, comfort and responsibility.
There is no constant in love because it is forever changing; instead love is inconsistent,
therefore creating various outcomes. Love is young, then matures, and sometimes withers. The
only constant in love is that it varies from person to person. Sula gained a possessive feeling
when it came to her love to Ajax. The young adults entered the passionate affair with the benefit
of enjoying one another’s independence. Ajax managed to open a new feeling that no other lover
gave to her: possession. Ajax recognizes this new change into Sula’s behavior and ends up
fleeing from the relationship, making Sula heartbroken and devastated. According to Psychology
Today, casual sexual affairs and romantic love are on a different level, yet both are a serious
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matter. Friendship, however, is not a causal relationship (psychology today 1). We do not
become friends with all our acquaintances/associates. Friendship assumes the continuation of the
relationship over a period of time and a depth that is absent from mere casual acquaintances.
However, as friendship refers to a less comprehensive interaction between two people, it requires
a less comprehensive commitment than romantic love. One of the biggest challenges of reading
Sula is to understand how the characters can do things that, on the surface, appear cruel, even as
they claim to be acting out of love.
Ajax is a character that does not stay in the novel long but makes a long and deep impact
on some of the characters, mainly Sula. His relationship with Sula is easy and satisfying at first.
But he senses that the sex between them is starting to mean something more to Sula, and this
scares him off. On the one hand, he makes no promises to her of a committed relationship, and
