Celeste

Moore 312070454 ENGL1026 Stephen Atkinson Wednesdays 3pm CHICKEN LITTLES DEATH pp. 57-61 The crux or pivot moment in the creation of the fictive self for Mia in Fish Tank is the kidnapping of Keira, which forces Mia into a position of mothering and caring for the first time, a role she probably has not been exposed to, judging by the mother-daughter relationships we are exposed to in the text. From here, Mia must start to make self- consciously adult decisions about the course of her self and life. In a similar vein, the drowning of Chicken Little is a crux point in the selves of Sula and Nel. It teaches Nel that not only is there no other to count on, there is no self either, and it lays the foundations for Sulas involvement in the African spiritual tradition in the novel. In the case of Chicken Little, the drowning is an accident gleeful playing turned tragic thanks to the frailty of human physicality. This physical frailty feeds into the traditional African spirituality present beneath the surface of the novel, and brings to the fore the incident of Chickens death, which haunts the identities of Nel and Sula for the remainder of the novel. One of these many elements of traditional spirituality integral to understanding constructions both of the text and the characters is that of Nigerian/West African spirit children, known as ogbanje-abiku, whose signifiers include many violent deaths and repeated births to the same mother. Okonkwo argues that the character of Sula is an ogbanje-abiku due to her recklessness, havoc-causing mischievousness and repeated births and deaths of self, two of which take place in this chapter. First, when she overhears her mother saying she loves her but doesnt really like her, and then when Chicken Little slips through her fingers. Traditionally, ogbanje-abiku would be mutilated, defaced and cast out in an attempt to prevent them from returning, in a similar vein to that of Sula, who self-mutilates when attacked, causes havoc within the community, and then disappears for ten years. Sula is on a perpetual quest to make herself in a manner consistent with a spirit child who is without self. Her ogbanje qualities are implicitly recognised by the community of the Bottom who refuse to grieve at her funeral for fear she might return. Sula, as well as being represented as a spirit child, is shown to be one with nature, particularly water and this aspect of her self is the driving force behind the natural imagery and focus in the novel. Trees signify death, life and the afterlife in African spirituality which makes the tree-climbing incident just prior to Chicken Littles death significant because it represents all three: the beauty of life in Chickens glee, foreshadowing of his death, and the upwards movement towards heaven from the Bottom indicating afterlife. The importance of trees is again underscored when Sula appears to Nel after her death in a tree, the dead appearing to the living from the afterlife. This incident also highlights the importance of the girls predicted identities, despite the split which occurs after Sula sleeps with Jude. Chicken Littles role is that of a rewritten White folk tale, and also that of a child sacrifice in the tradition of West African culture. Like his namesake he is gullible and engulfed. It his engulfing he is predicated with Sula, who, as a ogbanje-abiku and water goddess, swallows characters in the same way water swallows things. Should he be read as a warning of the troubles and deaths attributed to Sula yet to come, or is the hysteria surrounding and focus on his death to come merely paranoia in the vein of the sky is

Celeste Moore 312070454 ENGL1026 Stephen Atkinson Wednesdays 3pm falling? It should be noted that a number of the deaths attributed to Sula contain the theme of chicken choking to death on a chicken bone, causing chicken pox etc. Chickens gentle death is reminiscent of those of children who were sacrificed in the Bight of Benin during its time as a slave-trading port. His sacrifice should calm and please the river gods, that is, Sula, but instead ironically haunts her throughout her life, playing a crucial role in her establishment of a self which is permanently grieving for her innocence and childhood lost in that moment, and Chicken Little himself. Finally, the matrilineality involved in the post-death selves of Sula and Nel draws together the tortured mother of the ogbanje-abiku, the predication of Nel and Sulas identities and the African spirituality of the novel. This occurs nearly a hundred pages after the fact, when Nel visits Eva in the nursing home. Eva accuses her of murdering Chicken Little, something she could never have known about or witnessed, and declares that Nel and Sula are one and the same. This intuition mimics the ancestral eminence afforded in African spirituality, and the instinctive knowledge about their children the mothers of ogbanje-abiku are said to have. The interaction leads Nel to break into the uncontrolled area which had always been Sulas domain, bring the calm and reckless halves of their selves into completion again. The interweaving of strong women selves with rewriting of white and black traditions is typical of Morrisons writing, which aims to obliterate any preconceptions of gender, race or spirituality. My question: Is Sula rewriting black or white history and tradition? Bibliography: Crutcher Lewis Vashti. African Tradition in Toni Morrisons Sula. Phylon (1960-) 48, no. 1 (1987): 91-97 Mayberry Susan Neal. Something Other Than A Family Quarrel: The Beautiful Boys in Morrisons Sula. African American Review 37, no. 4 (2003): 517-533. Morrison Toni. Sula. London: Vintage 1998. Okonkwo Christopher N. A Critical Divination: Reading Sula as Ogbanje-Abiku. African American Review 38, no. 4 (2004): 651-668