Black Emancipation in Toni Morrison’s Sula

Abstract

Sula, in the biblical language, plays the role of Moses the deliverer. Moses delivered the Jewish race from the Egyptian bondage and slavery. Similarly, Sula tries to deliver the black human race from slavery and subordination to the white race. Sula is not appreciated by her own black people on account of their ignorance and total unawareness of what she is doing for their own people. In this respect, she has to go away from the Medallion village for many years and her coming back to the village is not relished by her own people. The black people do not know that she is doing the best for her own people in the manner of awakening them to their independent status as a pre-responsible black citizens. She is a farsighted revolutionary. Her own people do not catch up with Sula. Black people do not have a long-range perspective and vision and so they misunderstand her. It is in this atmosphere of resistance that Sula has to establish the freedom of her own people who have no notion about anything as they lived in ignorance.