Sula Lesson Plan

Sula asks Nel how she knows who was good to whom in their relationship. What is the larger significance of this question in the novel?

The novel is full of reversals, beginning with the odd fact that the “Bottom” exists up in the hills. Throughout the novel, Sula represents moral reversals in that she forces us to question what we would usually label as “good” or “bad.” Though Nel is supposed to be the “good” friend, in fact she was complicit in Sula’s accidentally killing Chicken, as Eva later points out. And though Sula is supposed to be the “bad” one, she did nothing nearly as immoral as Eva’s killing Plum. When she asks Nel how she can know which one of them was the...