Lauren Aiello

12 AP Literature and Composition

Mrs. Smit
January 9, 2015

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The Meaning of Life

The adventures of life do not fail to surprise its occupants. Every new day is another
journey filled with plenty of ups and downs. The novel Sula, by Toni Morrison, is centered on a
girl named Sula and her friendship that she shares with another girl named Nel. Characters in the
novel live in a place called The Bottom, which is a mostly black community in Ohio on top of
the hills where the wealthy white people live below in the town Medallion. At the beginning of
the novel, Nel and Sula become good friends and experience troubles and lasting memories
together. Admonitions to a Special Person, by Anne Sexton, is a poem about warning and
advice to those who are maturing as a human. She goes through several instances that one should
watch out for due to the dangers that come along with them. Both the poem, Admonitions to a
Special Person, and the novel, Sula, have comparable structures and themes of betrayal, good vs
evil, and love.
The structure of the poem and the novel are very much alike in that they both follow the
same plot line containing lifes struggles which lead to a moment of epiphany. Each stanza of the
poem and its warning given by Anne Sexton can be connected to a specific instance in the novel,
Sula. Both main characters in the novel, Nel and Sula, are maturing in life throughout the novel
and both could have used these warnings in the poem because the consequences all seem to
happen. The first stanza of the poem talks about power. It uses a metaphor to connect power to
an avalanche. Watch out for power, for its avalanche can bury you, snow, snow, snow,
smothering your mountain (Sexton). She is not only addressing the dangers of obtaining power
but the dangers of seeking power. The repetition gives the sense of snow piling up too fast to stop

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it. The mountain used in this stanza is a symbol for life. Sula, is all about the journey of life
which makes it similar to this poem. During the whole novel, there are many times when
characters are demanding power. An important figure of the novel, Shadrack, wishes to gain
power so his created National Suicide Day will be recognized and participated in. Shadrack
experienced a tragic event in World War I and institutes this day to be on January 3 in which
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people of the Bottom should commit suicide or, if they want, kill each other. Bout three days.
The pains started on Suicide Day and kept up till the following Sunday (Morrison 25). People
started to use Shadracks terminology and they slowly began to recognize the day due to
Shadracks demand for attention and power. Eventually, Shadrack was looked at as the crazy
man on the street. His demand for power led for his life to be enclosed by only one reputation.
No one saw him as the sensitive and caring man that he was, but rather as the disrespectful and
eccentric man. The poem suggests to watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it
knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out
of your mouth (Sexton). In this stanza, Sexton reveals that thinking too much can lead to
complex thoughts of nothingness. She used imagery in the poem of being hung upside down by
intellect to envelope her idea together that having or being proud of so much knowledge can rid
someone of their passion. Eva and her most distinctive personality helps the novel connect with
this event the poem is depicting. Quickly, as the whoosh of flames engulfed him, she shut the
door and made her slow and painful journey back to the top of the house (Morrison 53). Eva
believed that she knew everything and that she was the most intelligence mother of them all. She
spent most her life trying to be the best mother she could be. One day Eva even returned home
with a leg missing and some say she cut it off to sell it to put food on the table and for some extra
cash. Her belief that her raising of her four children was the only right way to raise a child, led

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her to soon lose sight of her passion of motherhood. She burned her only son alive. What she
once protected with all she could was now a pile of ashes on the bed she set the fire on.
The themes that the poem and the novel contain are very similar. Some themes they share
are betrayal, good vs evil, and love. The poem talks about the dangers that friendship can lead to.
Watch out for friends, because when you betray them, as you will, they will bury their heads in
the toilet and flush themselves away (Sexton). The poem is suggesting that no true friendship
can last a lifetime and one, if not both, of the people involved in the friendship will be washed
away and their souls deprived. One of the most prominent themes in the novel, Sula, is the
theme of friendship and betrayal. So how could you leave me when you knew me? (Morrison
106), Nel asked. Nel married a man named Jude when Sula left the Bottoms to proceed on with
her dreams. When Sula returned unexpectedly, she was quick to sweep Jude out from under Nel
and take him for herself. Sula already had the reputation of sleeping with many men and not
being loyal to any, but this became a new low for even her. This theme of betrayal is expressed
constantly throughout the novel from the friendship between Nel and Sula making a turn for the
worse. Another theme that is similar in both the poem and the novel is the theme of love. Watch
out for love, it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream wont be heard and none of
your running will end (Sexton). She uses a simile and breathtaking imagery to address the belief
that love symbolizes eternal suffocation. It is a never ending battle that will leave you
emotionless. In the novel, the need for a person to feel loved is mentioned many times. Sula
thinks that she does not need anyone in the world and becomes detached and lonely. Her lack of
love, leads her to talk about her mournful life on her deathbed. But my lonely is mine. Now
your lonely is somebody elses. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Aint that
something? A secondhand lonely (Morrison 140). Sula was desperately in need of love and Nel

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tried to provide it for her, but Sula began to push her away slowly through betrayal. The whole
poem goes from warning and morbid thoughts to at the end a celebration of maturity. But wants
to break crystal glasses, in celebration, for you, when the dark crust is thrown off and you float
all around like a happened balloon (Sexton). The breaking of crystal classes can be an allusion
to the Greek Opa! and plate breaking. The poem also suggest that one has to experience good
and evil in order to receive celebration. In the novel, Sula and Nel undergo a misfortunate even
in their childhood that is a major theme of the story. The water darkened and closed quickly
over the place where Chicken Little sank. The pressure of his hard and tight little fingers was still
in Sulas palms as she stood looking at the closed place in the water. They expected him to come
back up, laughing. Both girls stared at the water (Morrison 66). While playing with a
neighborhood kid they aided in his death accidently. Sula goes through life believing that she is
evil because she was the one who killed Chicken Little, the young boy. Nel believes that she is
good because she didnt kill him, she was simply just present. Nel visits Sulas grave and she
realizes that she was also to blame for the death and she has lived a hypocritical life. By
experiencing this moment of epiphany, she is now able to celebrate and embrace Sula as her best
friend and judges her to be good, in spite of what the community thought of her.
Both the poem, Admonitions to a Special Person, and the novel, Sula, have comparable
structures and themes of betrayal, good vs evil, and love. The warnings in the poem are similar to
the mistakes that are made in the novel and the dangers and consequences of each warning or
advice are present in the novel as well, such as the dangers of power and intellect. The themes of
both the poem and the novel are also similar in many ways. Similar themes shared are love,
betrayal, and good vs evil. The striking comparisons of these two pieces of literature serve a
purpose which is to understand the meaning of life and the journeys that come along with it.

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