Three Beets (Symbol)
The winter of 1895 is a particularly dismal one in the lives of Eva, Hannah, Pearl, and Plum. Eva’s husband BoyBoy has run off, leaving his wife and three children alone to fend for themselves. At one point, there is a stretch of five days in which all they have in the house to eat are three beets. After a particularly traumatizing night in which Eva has to take an infant Plum to the frozen outhouse and forces him to have a bowel movement, Eva resolves that things must change. She leaves her kids with a neighbor for 18 months, loses a leg on purpose to collect the insurance money, and returns to the Bottom a wealthy woman. Once her children are grown, Eva remembers the three beets they had in their house as a symbol of the sacrifices she made to support and raise them.
The Tunnel (Symbol)
The tunnel, also known as the New River Road, is an ongoing but much delayed construction project planned and funded by the city of Medallion. The point of the road is to connect Medallion to the surrounding towns, bringing increased trade, commerce, and jobs to both the white and black communities. For ten years the project has languished, and even got changed from a road to a tunnel. The inhabitants of the Bottom relentlessly try to get hired to work on the project, but are turned away in favor of white laborers. At the end of the novel the truth is revealed—the tunnel is no closer to completion now than it was ten years ago. All of the supplies were frozen in the frost that swept through Medallion, and are useless once the frost melts. The white city officials and political leaders of Medallion have been lying the entire time. This is similar to the lies and subterfuge the white farmer fed to the former slave who would become the Bottom’s first inhabitant. Thus, the New River Road tunnel represents the lies, platitudes, and deceptions different facets of the US government fed to African Americans in the early to mid-20th century.
Premonitions (Motif)
Though Morrison denies that Sula has elements of magic realism, the novel definitely has a touch of the supernatural, in the form of premonitions. Countless times in the novel normally innocuous objects give characters feelings or indications about upcoming events. For example, when Hannah tells her mother about her dream of the wedding in the red dress, Eva thinks it odd. It’s only later, when Hannah dies after accidentally lighting herself on fire, that Eva thinks of folklore about weddings meaning death, and red meaning fire. Similarly, when Sula returns to the Bottom, bringing with her scandal and an offensive free-spiritedness, it’s during a time when robins have taken over the skies. To all the people of the Bottom who dislike Sula, the robins have foretold her return and the bad times they associate with her.
The Gray Ball (Symbol)
After Nel discovers that Jude and Sula are having an affair, a gray ball composed of muddy string, fur, and hair begins to float just to the right of her, just out of view. Nel cannot see the ball, but she can sense its quiet yet malevolent presence. The ball stays with Nel for the whole summer of 1937, the year of Sula’s return. We don’t hear about it again until the end of the novel, when Nel finally mourns the loss of her best friend and the time they wasted. When Nel whispers “Sula?” the grey ball finally breaks and scatters like dandelion pores in the wind. The grey ball is a physical manifestation of Nel and Sula’s once close, but then estranged, relationship. It appears when Nel and Sula have their falling out, and breaks apart when Nel finally forgives Sula. The color of the ball, gray, represents the shades of gray that each woman is made up of. Neither woman is completely right or wrong in their actions towards each other or the world around them. Neither of their modes of behaving is completely black or white.
Sula and Nel (Allegory)
Like their mothers, Sula and Nel represent two ends of the female spectrum. After leaving the Bottom for ten years, Sula returns a liberated and morally free woman, defiant in the face of society’s demands and expectations of her. This is much to the chagrin of her neighbors and fellow townspeople, who resent the way she comes home and shakes life up. By herself, Sula is an allegory for the parable of the prodigal son, except unlike the original tale she doesn’t return destitute. This is the polar opposite of Nel, who never leaves the Bottom except for a childhood trip with her mother, and who becomes a beloved daughter and member of the community. Furthermore, when comparing Sula’s promiscuity and unpopularity with Nel’s chastity and popularity, the two women become an allegory for society’s condemnation of sexually “loose” women, and its idolization of sexually conservative women.
