Hannah Stevens

British and American women writers

Dr. Mara
The fires of Sula
In part one of Sula by Toni Morrison there are many references to fire, which takes two
lives in the course of the novel. These deaths suggest a significance of fire in the novel, not only
as a source of heat and comfortable living in the cold, but also as a source of control and power.
Both Plum and Hannah are killed by fire, one of them murdered, one of them in a seemingly
accidental canning fire, but with similarities between the two deaths, including the ability of a
bystander to save them because they either: started the fire, and could have prevented it, or stood
back and watched. Fire is mentioned throughout the novel and it is even threatened in a way to
try to gain control over someone when Sula uses it against Eva when she returns to Medallion,
and fire becomes a symbol for a sense of domination that it can give, despite the typically warm
and secure feeling it is supposed to draw, making it a prominent symbol in Sula, not only to the
characters in the novel that it affects directly, but also to the town, in which they call home.
Fire gives these characters control over either: their own lives, or others and can be first
examined by Evas murder of Plum. Eva later states, in a blind rant to Hannah, that she killed
Plum out of necessity and that he was too needy and there was no way she could help him with
his growing and overwhelming need for her, Look like when he came back from that war he
wanted to git back inHe wanted to crawl back in my womb and wellI aint got no room no
more even if he could do it (Morrison, 71). In this initial death that is shown, Eva needed to
control what could not be controlled, which is ironic because she used fire, which is very hard to
control, to kill her son in a house full of people which is extremely dangerous, showing her
blindness towards the whole situation, or even how last minute and rash her decision was

because of her lack of realization of how dangerous starting a fire in her own house could be.
This is clearly a very desperate woman who cannot bear the thought of having more people to
take care of in her life, when she makes this decision. Plum needed her more than she could give
and that loss of control was going to be the end of her and she needed that feeling of total
authority over her life after she was abandoned by her husband and left to take care of three kids,
with little means of survival. Nobody would want to go back to that time, caring for three kids
alone when you have already been through it once, and the way that Plum was acting, Eva was
going to need to take care of him again, which she was not emotionally or financially stable to
do, resulting in her rash decision, and blindness towards the situation, when confronted multiple
times. That is one instance of fire literally taking someones life and giving someone else control,
but Sula also shows an example of the fire in someones soul, which can overtake their life and
instill fear in their community.
The most unusual character that fire indirectly affects is Shadrack as he returns from war
and uses the spark in his soul from the war to bring fear and an uneasy feeling to this small
community. The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is a religious story about three men
who are saved by divine intervention from being burned alive in a furnace, giving a sort of
foreshadowing into the life of Shadrack just by his biblical name. Claude Pruitt who wrote the
article Circular meaning in Toni Morrisons Sula, also points out that Shadrack, like his
biblical namesake, survived firethe fire of World War I, and just barely (Pruitt, 117). Pruitt
shows the control war has over a person because Shadrack, who barely escapes the fires of war
with a fraction of his sanity, returns less than normal, and we see the force that the fire of war has
on a person. In this, it is not real fire, but a phrase and a metaphorical fire, that has total control
over a singular character in Sula despite the war being a very simple aspect of the novel as a

whole, and is considered part of white history and not so much a part of the history of this
community. Because this war is considered part of white history, it is irrationally
misunderstood, and because of his role in the war and the way he acts when he returns, Shadrack
is misunderstood, in a way that he cannot control, and in a way that is scary and foreign to this
community. The madness this fire of war gives Shadrack a sense of power and he is out-cast
because he is different from the rest of this community, and the novel shows this when he is
described in the opening of Sula, At first the people in the town were frightened; they knew
Shadrack was crazy but that didnt mean that he didnt have any sense or, even more important,
that he had no power (Morrison, 15). The people in this town have a fear of Shadrack because
of the way he acts in response to the war and the fire the war lights in his soul, showing the
control fire has over the characters in this novel, even if it is not physical flame destroying the
character, and the minds of those around them, but an internal madness that fire can instill. Their
ability to use that fire for the control of their life, and to use that to their advantage affecting
those around them, as Shadrack does by being out-cast and instilling fear in his community, is
the true power, and the true control over those around him, that fire gives. Not all of the
characters in this novel are lucky enough to have a fire in their soul that gives them power, and
this is shown in Hannah, who has no control over her elimination from this novel.
Hannahs death is similar to Plums death in the way that she has no control of her
deletion from the pages, but because she is gone, Sula is able to find the control and the
normality she does not and cannot find from her mother or her grandmother early on in the
novel. Hannah is burned in the process of canning vegetables, which proves its importance in
this novel by the entire chapter devoted to this task, and the fact that everyone in the community
does it right before winter, so there is that initial knowledge or assumption that Hannah has

probably canned multiple times, so it seems strange that this is the cause of her death in the first
place. Eva attempts to save Hannah in the way she doesnt save Plum, but upon further reflection
Eva remembers watching Sula observe the whole situation, not with horror on her face, but with
interest, But inside she [Eva] disagreed and remained convinced that Sula had watched
Hannah burn not because she was paralyzed, but because she was interested(Morrison, 78). Its
like dj vu for Eva who did the same thing when she lit her son on fire, and silently ignored the
screams for help and played the role of innocent bystander. It is also interesting that Sula is in
tears and inconsolable during the funeral of Chicken Little, the young boy she accidentally kills,
but sits and watches calmly as her own mother dies in front of her, similar to the way that she
calmly watching Chicken Little sink to the bottom of the lake, with the total ability to intervene,
but she chooses not to. This is emphasizing Sulas need for order in her life, like Nel has that she
doesnt receive from her home and her mother, when she watches her mother burn with wonder
on her face instead of horror, like any sane person, but the fact that her mother confesses ...I
love Sula. I just dont like her(Morrison, 57) plays a huge role in Sulas unstable home life, and
her ability to watch her mother burn to death without any remorse and without a second glance
as viewed by a simple reading of the novel. The community that Sula lives in uses this madness
as a crutch to order the world around them; women lock up their families and act how society
believes they should, like providers, which we do not see earlier in the novel. Despite the
craziness seen in Sula while she watches members of her family die, there is a benefit to the
madness that we see in the characters fire affects the most, and a benefit to the society around
them.
Fire, evil, and madness seem to be similar aspects in this novel and they all seem to go
hand in hand. Cedric Gael Bryant, who wrote The Orderliness of Disorder: Madness and Evil in

Toni Morrisons Sula says, evil and madness are obverse sides of the same phenomenon,
threatening the black communities in Sula with chaos (Bryant) enforcing the fact that evil
and madness are one in the same, and the element of fire in this novel gives these characters the
face of evil and the face of madness. Sula gives a good example of her madness with the threats
she gives to Eva when she returns to Medallion saying, maybe Ill just tip on up here with
some kerosene and who knows you may make the brightest flame of them all (Morrison 94)
taunting her grandmother, in a cynical manner. Because of this madness, the community around
Sula, Eva, and Shadrack, bands together against this force and is bettered in the long run, when
wives and mothers keep their families together away from the evil that surrounds them. All three
of these characters are symbols for the destruction that occurs around them, both a symbol of
death and a life-giving force for the community (Bryant) because they are surrounded by death,
but they breath a sort of normality into this societally different town. These characters are feared
and shunned in most cases, but the madness and evilness they instill on this community, has a
benefit when women go beyond their abilities to protect the ones they love from the evil. Even
though people have died from the symbol in this novel, the benefit of what it brings is a greater
influence on the plot and has a greater benefit on the characters overall, as they are taking control
over their own lives.
Fire is a prominent symbol in this novel and it is used as a sign of control or power,
especially when Sula threatens to kill Eva by setting her on fire, when she returns to Medallion
and the power Shadrack has. Two characters are killed by the need for control that fire provides
for other characters in this novel and these people are in control of the decision to start the fire or
the decision to watch the fire burn, and they use the element to change the outcome of their lives.
The power fire instills in ones soul, after a traumatic event or even by the fire in a persons eyes

that those around them can point out and receive a certain feeling from, that that person fuels on
their own drives the plot of this novel. This is a prominent symbol, when the text describes the
way Shadrack is treated within this small community, after he returns from the war, less than
normal. The central conflicts in this novel are somehow solved when a fire is started and the
element that is supposed to give a person warmth and security, gives the families in this story
fear and loneliness and a type of influence over other characters, which wouldnt be present
without the push that a match and some gasoline gives to them, to give them an easy out to their
problems and their lives, a type of madness that can not be avoided. A type of evil, that has this
small community reeling with a need to protect their own, and keep away the madness that is
overtaking their society, like wildfire.

Works cited
Bryant, Cedric Gael. The Orderliness of disorder: Madness and Evil in Toni Morrisons Sula.
Black American Literature Forum. Vol. 24, Issue 4. November 14th, 2012.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. New York: Knopf; [distributed by Random House, 1973. Print.
Pruitt, Claude. Circular Meaning in Toni Morrisons Sula. African American Review. Vol. 44
Issue . Page 115-129. 2010. November 13th, 2012.