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The purpose of post structuralism is to identify the disunity of the work. The binary oppositions show disunity of the novel in two ways, paradox and irony.
1) Paradox
The first paradox is the location of the Bottom and valley town of Medallion. The Bottom is located above the valley town of Medallion. The Bottom is the place where black people live. And the white people live in Medallion. This setting contains two values being argued. Morrison places black people in the up of the valley. It means that black people is above the white people. However, the name of the community is the Bottom. The name and the location create a strong opposition.
However, if we take a closer look in the prologue, the nigger joke gives a further clue. The Bottom is a joke indeed. The white farmer does not want to give the slave any land to fulfill his promise. He fools the nigger so that the nigger will accept the Bottom. The farmer says that the Bottom is the best land.
&He had hoped to give him a piece of the bottom. The slave blinked and said he thought valley land was bottom land. The master said, Oh no! See those hills? Thats bottom land, rich and fertile. (Morrison p. 5)
As a matter of fact the Bottom is not fertile at all. It is even the worst land where planting is very difficult to be done.
&The nigger got the hilly land where planting was back breaking where the soil slipped down and washed away the seeds and where the wind lingered all through the winter& (Morrison p. 5)
Moreover living in the up of the valley gives the black people the best view to the white people who lives below them. The view of the white people reminds them how miserable their live is. Again in this part, Morrison gives another paradox. She uses the word look down at the white people instead of the word admire .
Which accounted for the fact that white people live on the rich valley floor in that little river town in Ohio, and the blacks populated the hills above it, taking small consolation in the fact that everyday they could literally look down on the white folks. (Morrison p. 5)
2) Irony
The white values represented in the character of Nel Wright, in the end of the story shows that she is not the best woman after all. Nevertheless, Sula Peace who is stereotyped as the pariah shows that she is better than Nel. Nel strengthens the white values in the community while Sula tries to oppose the white value by creating her own value.
About who was good. How you know it was you?
What you mean?
I mean maybe it wasnt you. Maybe it was me. (Morrison p. 146)
The good personality that Nel brings up in the community blinds them of their own identity. While Sulas bad personality opens the communitys eyes of their own identity although they choose to ignore it. Sula finally realizes Nels blindness of love and her concept of good and evil.
&We was girls together, she said as though explaining something. O Lord Sula, she cried, girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.
It was a fine cry loud and long but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. (Morrison p. 174)
Conclusion
Toni Morrisons Sula, is considered to be postmodern novel based on the following characteristics.
Postmodernism is reaction against modernism.
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