Sula: Is Nel the actual hero?

During my reading of Sula I did not see many heroic qualities in the character of Sula. I believe that a hero is someone who displays exceptional courage, nobility, strength, and contributes some type of positive transforming quality to society. Sula’s negative reputation actually rallies the Bottom together against her. Sula serves as a symbol that all the people of the Bottom can oppose. So indirectly, Sula unites the Bottom. However, I do not view any of her acts as noble. Whether it is watching her mother burn, putting Eva into a nursing home, or having an affair with Jude, I see none of these scenes as noble.
Taking a closer look at Sula as a character, she does not value anything external. She even goes on to justify her affair with Jude, telling Nel: “I didn’t kill him, I just fucked him. If we were such good friends, how come you couldn’t get over it” (145). In this statement, she faults Nel for the affair, something I find completely out of line. The only heroic quality I see within the novel is displayed in the end by Nel. Her self-examination and confrontation of her own lifestyle is something admirable, noble, and may possibly lead to positive changes in her future. In that respect, I believe that Sula serves as the spark that ignites Nel's heroic qualities.

The Poetic Form of "Seventh Street"

What strikes me about Toomer's "Seventh Street" is the form of the text which synthesizes both poetry and prose. However, the important question for is: What can I learn from the form, and are the forms really what we think they are? For me, I think this piece was originally supposed to be a poem. Thus Toomer begins the story with a traditional poem, but that feeling shifts when Toomer switches to prose.

But this prose doesn't read like prose. Its language is interestingly poetic and it has a flow to it that is enhanced by questions and imagery. The prose itself, also, resembles stream-of-consciousness type of writing, and Toomer is pouring all of his emotions and feelings into this vision of the 7th street. I find this piece remarkable because it seems to me that Toomer is deconstructing our notions of what a poem should be because it does not adequately capture his feelings and experiences on 7th street. Therefore, the poems at the beginning and at the end of the prose are afterthoughts that frame the prose. The utilization of the poems as frames suggests that Toomer wants us to think of the prose as a new poetic form.

Personally, I like this approach to poetry; it's edgy, raw, and powerful. And to an extent, it captures Toomer's ideas and feelings a 7th street better than traditional poetic forms. This doesn't mean that the poetry in the piece isn't powerful or emotional itself; I just think that this piece is Toomer's way of saying that: "while traditional poetry does capture emotion, it doesn't accomplish what I need it to for my experiences." I think we can learn a lot from this piece and its focus on form.

Wedges in "Seventh Street"

Wedges are an important part of this poem. The word 'wedge' is used to divide, show a piece, and shine in this place. Seventh Street of Washington, D.C. is a "wedge of nigger life" (Toomer 41), a little slice of the larger world. It's characterized by the colors white and red, of blood and the white of a majority. The wedge is again brought in as rusting, unable to split the city though encouraged to try with "Split it! In two! Again! Shred it!" (41). The wedges shine in the sunlight, perhaps symbolizing the action of the people in this time as they work to form an identity through music and art. The wedges break down the walls of oppression, making the wet wood, perhaps hatred, dry up and blow away. Class structure might have wedges driven in as people seem more as equals here. Wedges carry many different meanings in this piece, both as a bit of life and a way to change life.

Flowing Disarray

The repeated use of "flowing", "wet", and "soggy" strikes my attention. It creates a consistent image of a river, or a flood, even, pouring through a city. But this is no ordinary river: through this city is flowing a flood of blood. The blood all over Seventh Street is of unnatural origin. It's shown to arise from the "bastard of Prohibition and War", flowing from the splintered and shattered world of Washington. We get a picture of this splintered world in the list: "shanties, brick office buildings, drug stores, restaurants, cabarets." Similar to the scene of Toomer's "Theater", the city holds a stark juxtaposition of poor and prosperous, but the river of blood flowing through blends these two together, so that the whole scene reeks of death. The flow exposes the rotten aspects of the city, the pocket-burning money, the bootleggars and the zooming Cadillacs that are at the backdrop of the scene. Toomer calls this to shame: "Who set you flowing? ...Swirling like a blood-red smoke up where the buzzards fly in heaven? Who set you flowing?"

Money in Toomer's "Seventh Street"

In "Seventh St", money corrupts people. Toomer sees blacks on Seventh St. as becoming prosperous through bad means --it is "a bastard of Prohibition and the War." Toomers says that "money burns the pocket." It corrupts. Toomer sees it as wrong to see a street with such decadence. He describes "bootleggers in silken shirts/Ballooned, zooming Cadillacs". Toomer is disgusted by people making money off the war and from smuggling alcohol. He sees the street becoming pretentious from their new found money by "breathing its loafer air" in contempt of people that don't have money.

Blood (Heritage)

Jean Toomer’s “Seventh Street,” is a story that expresses the influence of two different cultures. In an attempt to analyze the story it is necessary to look at it through a specific critical lens. As a way of understanding the influx of symbols present in the story, it is necessary to take a post colonial (P.S.) approach. This approach allows for a broader understanding of specific symbols.
Throughout the story it becomes a pattern how certain nouns become inflicted by outside forces, causing those nouns to develop new understandings. What is meant by new understandings may seem a little unclear. For an example, in the story Toomer describes blood as “black reddish blood;” this description conveys to the reader a sense of resistance. “Black reddish blood,” not just red blood which is generally understood; this blood has keep its old features, but understood from the “reddish” is that there is an overwhelming force that is causing the infiltration.
This idea of resistance in this play seems to be a common theme, but the resistance seems to be alleviated as a result of the government. However, the government mentioned isn’t the only force that is causing individual people, cultures, and races to slowly lose their true blood (heritage). As a result of assimilation present in this story, the blood will continue to dilute heritage until there is one dominant culture.

The Blood of Seventh Street

Jean Toomer's "Seventh Street," a short story/poem in Cane, features one recurring symbol I find especially important: blood.

The first use we see is the wedge that thrusts "black reddish blood into the white and whitewashed wood of Washington." This imagery marks an important contrast. To begin with, we have the "white" of Washington, and the "whitewashed," that which has been abducted by the white man. The "black reddish blood" is inserted into this, contrasting the status quo. We have "black" blood, referring to African Americans, but the metaphor takes it one step further with "reddish" implying perhaps that black blood is not quite as red, or human, as white blood. We again see the phrase "black reddish blood", this time standing alone as a sentence. This marks two important uses: one, repetition, to emphasize the image; and two, the phrase standing by itself, as an island of meaning within the text.

The next use is seen in the sentence, "Blood suckers of the War would spin in a frenzy of dizziness if they drank your blood." Here we have "blood suckers of the War" in contrast to "your blood." The former could refer to any number of things; perhaps it refers to people who benefited from the war. The benefactors of the war would have certainly been white businessman, as production went soaring during World War I. Here we see an image of drinking blood. And "your blood" is definitely black blood. Perhaps the "blood suckers" could not drink the black blood in the sense that they could not swindle the blacks, or else they would "spin in a frenzy of dizziness."

The third use of blood in the text incurs the already used image of "white" and "whitewash." Here we see that the whites and whitewash "disappears in blood." We also see that the sentence "Who set you flowing," a phrase that uses blood imagery, is set on either side of this earlier image. The phrase "who set you flowing?" also appears two more times in the text, marking more repetition than any other phrase in the text.

The flowing image is seen in the next paragraph when it refers to the blood flowing down Seventh Street, in "shanties, brick office buildings, theaters, drug stores, restaurants, and cabarets." Here we see the blood flowing, taking over Seventh Street: the rise of black power.

Another image is the "blood-red smoke" that rises towards the heavens, where the  buzzards fly.

The final image is the of God. Here, we see that "God would not dare to suck black red blood." The reddish image is abandoned finally but even so, black blood is not fit for God, for that would make him a "Nigger God," who "would duck his head in shame and call for the Judgement Day."