All in hell
...conversation in which her mother says that she loves Sula, but she does not like her (Morrison 57). Sula is deeply wounded by the off hand remark. Soon afterwards, she and Nel are playing near the river when they encounter another friend-Chicken Little. The children begin to play together. Sula is swinging Chicken Little around when she accidentally knocks him into the river. "The pressure of his hand and tight little fingers were still in Sula's palms as she stood looking at the closed place in the water. They expected him to come back up, laughing" (Morrison 61). This incident, combined with what feels to Sula like her mother's rejection, cause the child to turn away from the conventions of society and to avoid even the trauma of her own emotional reactions. Morrison writes that Sula was: As willing to feel pain as to give pain, to feel pleasure as to give pleasure, hers was an experimental life-ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river...The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow" (Morrison 118-119). For Sula, there is no "other" against which she can then define herself. Having rejected her community and her family, she wanders, trying somehow to define who she is. Sula turns to Shadrack, the local madman, at first because she worries that he saw what happene...