Meaning of Sula's Death for Bottom

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What is the significance or what does the action of Sula going back into a fetal position and sucking on her thumb symbolize? “She might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her thumb in her mouth” (Morrison 149). By reading this, you can understand that Sula has gone into a fetal position, which people would see as when a person would clench up and pull legs towards chest and hug themselves. Most people would see someone who goes back into a fetal position as scared and frightened Many people go back into a fetal position because it is comforting and a sense of safety because inside a mother’s womb, you were protected and felt a feeling of safety.

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So I believe that Sula might have gone back into the fetal position after being bed-ridden with a sickness because she is in danger and she feels scared with what’s happening around her. Also, it can symbolize the idea of repent or regret because like Sula might feel as if she is sorry and guilty for all the things she has done so she wants to go back to being a baby like she once was before.

Regrets all her past decisions and thinks it about it and wants to go back to being a baby where there were no problems or self decisions. She is uncomfortable with where she is in life and she feels as if she wants to start over her life and have a fresh start.

What was effect of Sula’s death on the Bottom and its people? After the news of Sula’s death spread throughout the Bottom, everyone found out and were ecstatic about it Sula was always causing problems and was evil to everyone around her in the Bottom, so people were happy for her to be gone. After her death, the very unpopular and no one celebrated holiday, everyone came out to celebrate the National Suicide Day with Shadrack. But Shadrack felt remorse and guilty over Sula’s death and he didn’t feel as if it was right Everyone was overjoyed that she passed away “The death of Sula Peace was the best news folks up in the Bottom had had since the promise of work at the tunnel” (Morrison 150). After Sula died everything started getting better.

There were jobs that came about in the Bottom that started to accept black labor and that helped improve lives of many people living within the Bottom. Maybe cause and effect right after Sula died, black people’s lives suddenly got a lot better in the Bottom. Can maybe correlate that since Sula has died, all the evil and despair within the Bottom has left and it has risen back to the top where everyone is living with joy. That all changes when winter hits them and everyone starts to go downhill. The people of the Bottom start to realize that Sula was a large part in keeping the place in order because how she was a main point of evil within the city where people could go against her.

Since there was no main evil within the Bottom, no one could go against anything and they believed that as a result their lives would start to go downhill; couldn’t compare themselves to her anymore. Parents who used to use Sula as an example to keep children in track was now gone since she has died “Bent her into fury and she beat him as she had not done since Sula knocked him down the steps. She was not alone. Other mothers who had defended their children from Sula’s malevolence (or who had defended their positions as motherse from Sula’s scorn for the role) now had nothing to rub up against” (Morrison 153). “Now that Sula was dead and done with, they returned to a steeping resentment of the burdens of old people” (Morrison 153-154)