ENL 177: “Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Freed Slaves”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Dr. Judith Rose

English 177

2 February 2010

Fear, Realization, Actualization: A Comparison of Nel and Newly-Free Slaves

Late that night after the fire was made, the cold supper eaten, the surface dust removed, Nel lay in bed thinking of her trip. She remembered clearly the urine running down and into her stockings until she learned how to squat properly; the disgust on the face of the dead woman and the sound of the funeral drums. It had been an exhilarating trip but a fearful one. She had been frightened of the soldiers' eyes on the train, the black wreath on the door, the custard pudding she believed lurked under her mother's heavy dress, the feel of unknown streets and unknown people. But she had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids and the nose her mother hated. She looked for a long time and suddenly a shiver ran through her.

“I'm me,” she whispered. “Me.”

Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.

“I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me.”

Each time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut.

“Me,” she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, “I want...I want to be...wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.”

The many experiences of her trip crowded in on her. She slept. It was the last as well as the first time she was ever to leave Medallion.

For days afterward she imagined other trips she would take, alone though, to faraway places. Contemplating them was delicious. Leaving Medallion would be her goal. But that was before she met Sula, the girl she had seen at Garfield Primary but never played with, never knew, because her mother said that Sula's mother was sooty. The trip, perhaps, or her new found me-ness, gave her strength to cultivate a friend in spite of her mother. (28-29)

In Toni Morrison's novel Sula there is a passage on pages 28 and 29 which contains a psychological passing of Nel through three stages of maturity that culminate in her discovering herself outside the world of her mother. Much like those freed slaves who could not fully grasp the meaning of “free,” Nel is learning what is hers, what is her mother's and what is her community's. Boundaries between freedom and slavery, joy and fear, pleasure and pain become clearer through experience and time. Though she does not fully realize her potential in this passage, she does embark on goals that are strictly hers alone: to leave Medallion, to be someone other than “Nel,” and to make a friend in spite of her mother's rules. Her transition through these stages mirrors those of the newly freed slaves who had to decide between a what they knew as home and the promise of a better place outside of that known world; the fear they had to overcome, the ideas they had about themselves and their dreams, and then putting those dreams into reality.

The first stage of the passage is fear, like the slaves who have not yet understood what it means to be free, Nel is embarking on a road not yet traveled as she tries to imagine a life different from her own. Nel catalogs her fears from the recent trip with her mother and the fears she lists all have one things in common: they deal in her fear of being judged by others, such as the urine on her legs, the disgust of the woman's face (28). She describes the trip as both “exhilarating” and “fearful,” as she remembers the world of unknowns that she was thrust into by her mother. Instead of being terrified Nel decides that a life of travel is what she desires; the exhilaration, fear, unknown—all these things gave her a new perspective which she desired to keep close to her. Nel is a girl controlled by her mother, Helene, and it is no surprise that she desires to find some other version of herself that is separate from her mother. Nel is at a point in her life where she must start to exercise her freedom from Helene but because of her Helene's controlling nature she must be careful in those things she chooses to do.

Comparing Nel's situation to that of freed slaves, the reader recognizes that a newly-freed slave will have little idea of what it is like beyond the captivity of his master. In freeing the slaves, but not providing them with an education or some means of supporting themselves outside of slavery, the slaves were left to decide what freedom means for them and how to pursue it. Jim Crow laws, set in place to discourage the rights of blacks, only reinforced the desire to move on to a better place, as this song illustrates:

I'm tired of being Jim Crowed, gonna leave this Jim Crow town,

Doggone my black soul, I'm sweet Chicago bound,

Yes, Sir, I'm leavin' here, from this ole Jim Crow town.

I'm going up North, where they think money grows on trees,

I don't give a doggone, if ma black soul should freeze

I'm goin' where I don't need no B.V.D.'s. (“The Great Migration”)

Like Nel, the song's singer longs to be gone from the world of “Jim Crow” where the rules are rules only for the sake of the rulers, and not for the good of those who are ruled. The comparison between Nel's mother and a white former-slave owner is easily compared in this passage when Nel's mother refers to Sula's mother as “sooty” (29). According to the OED, the word sooty is “an offensive name for a black person” which implies being “foul or dirty with soot” and also “foul with sin” (OED). Helene, though she is also black, fills the role of the oppressor well by using language that is derogatory to blacks in order to maintain the power over her daughter.

The next stage in this passage is Nel's realization that she does not have to live strictly under her mother's rule; she is her own person and can visualize herself in her mind as what she is: “I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me” (28). This move from fear to realization is important in breaking away from her mother and, for slaves, breaking away from the rules imposed on them by their former masters. They realize themselves as a separate entity from those who had them in captivity, finding who they are beyond the chains that kept them bound. The fear is still there for Nel but she embraces it as a “discovery” about herself and asks Jesus to make her “wonderful” (29). Nel has had an epiphany in which she sees herself not how her mother would have her see herself, but as she chooses to see herself. She is no longer “Nel” or their daughter: she has become a “me.” This same move is made by freed slaves who begin to see themselves not as slaves any longer, but as people who can make their own futures freed from slavery, Jim Crow laws, and outside the perspective of whites. They become something more than just former slaves and though there might be fear, that same fear is coupled with joy, and power. The joy of freedom and the power to choose what is best for their own future, instead of being told what to do—both Nel and former slaves have new, although unclear, paths ahead.

The final move in the passage is of Nel's actualization. She takes what she has learned and uses it to create goals for herself—mainly to leave Medallion. What really happens, however, is she meets Sula and despite her mother's disapproval decides to “cultivate a friend in spite of her mother” (29). This move on Nel's part to envision a life for herself outside of her mother's realm, and to do something that she knows her mother will disapprove of takes her from the realization that she is her own person, to actualization where she becomes her own person. The same can be said for the blacks who made the migration North: instead of waiting for the future to happen, they took steps to move themselves and their families to what they felt would be a better, more inviting, and prosperous place. Though Nel's action might seem small compared to the move from South to North, it is a big move for her to make on her own, with no support from anyone else to help her do it. In her own way, Nel migrated from the realm of her mother to her own, and though she ultimately decides to stay in Medallion her friendship with Sula proves to be the one thing to change her life forever.

Nel goes through three stages in this passage that are mirrored in the lives of former slaves during the reconstruction period in the South: fear, realization and actualization. In only a few lines, Morrison manages to capture the predicament of a generation of people who must decide between what they know and what they dream; what that need and what they want; who they are and who they want to be. It is not an easy struggle for either for Nel is up against her mother and her community, and the former slaves are up against a community as well: one that consists of hate, oppression and a tradition of bloodshed dating back hundreds of years. Both will succeed in small ways at first by taking those steps Nel goes through in discovering what she she fears and finding ways to realize her strengths and seek out those things she desires, even if it is something as simple as friendship from a girl her mother disapproves of.

Works Cited

“The Great Migration: Leaving the South.” inmotionaame.org. InMotion. January 30, 2009. Online. http://www.inmotionaame.org/migrations/topic.cfm?migration=8&topic=2

ENL 159: “The Problem of Identity”

Jolene Patricia Brown

Word Count: 1225

Dr. J. Marx

ENL 159

30 January 2010

The Problem of Identity

In the novel Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesburg Unlocked, Vladislavic gives the reader an exhilarating and surprisingly thorough view of the city from the perspective of one man. This single perspective manages to give a panoramic view of Johannesberg; it can be considered an argument against what LaTour presents in his work Paris:Invisible City when he argues against the ability to capture all of Paris. Despite their difference, Vladislavic and LaTour both present problems of personal identity in ways that are relevant in any social environment be it Paris or Johannesberg, urban or suburban. The problem of personal identity is complicated because identity is determined by perspective: one can know who they are and convince others of who they are, but in society the individual means nothing without validation from the constructs that determine a person's social identity. LaTour describes it best: “Either I really see and I see nothing; or I see nothing directly, I look at a trace and I begin to really see, I gradually become someone” (11). These problems are framed in both texts in such a way as to change with the perspective with which it is presented and such changes can manipulate the environment within the text giving the reader the illusion of security (or insecurity) that Vladislavic and LaTour explore within their writings.

Vladislavic frames identity in terms of keys and their relationship to security. The presence of keys in the novel is one that signals security be it personal or material but in one instance keys are shown as proof of insecurity:

...she takes out her bunch [of keys] and shows us the mysterious black key... At first, there are tipsy jokes about alien abductions and love nests, but soon their conversation turns serious. It's an unsettling idea, already people are fidgeting in their pockets, where their own keys are beginning to weigh more heavy...Dave suggests that someone might have put it there with a more serious purpose, to provoke some thought about security. Or rather insecurity. Less a practical joke than an object lesson. (142-143)

Keys are sources of power because they can lock up objects, such as steering wheels and houses, and people, such as criminals. This unsettling feeling of having an extra key on a ring reminds the individual that even their own keys might betray them to unfamiliar new routes of identity. The problem with the unknown key is the potential it brings with it; with each new key a new trace, as LaTour would call it, is unlocked for the user and those traces might lead to a danger that the user may not even be able to imagine. By placing the reader into this scene where keys suddenly pose a threat to the person the perspective now shifts and the setting is no longer one of security and instead replaced with suspicion of those things that normally bring security and with that a question of identity.

The individual in Vladislavic's novel is defined by their keys:

She fans them out with her forefinger, flips over the immobilizer jack for the car, takes another shot. They shame me now, lying there like keys to my psyche, a feeler gauge for every insecurity...I have threaded them on to the rings with their profiles facing in the same direction, like a dressed file of soldiers. Their noses and chins familiar to my fingertips, I can find them in the dark. (115-116)

The narrator in the above passage notes the insecurity that his keys represent to an outsider who does not understand the security those keys bring him. The keys can be both secure and insecure—or even both—depending on the way in which the text is interpreted by the reader. The individuality of the characters stems not from the person—the body—of the character but by their connections in the world. This is what is so important about the keys; they give the individual access to those things that make him who he is: his home, mailbox, car, safe, important documents, houses of his relatives and friends, his job. They are “a dressed file of soldiers” protecting the identity of the owner by granting him access to it. A known key is a source of power and security bringing to the user a sense of control in a world that does not allow him any control but an unknown key does not allow the user that power and instead robs him of the one thing he might claim: knowledge of his links to the world around him, thereby leading him to question the basis of his own identity.

LaTour is very interested in those things that make a whole and in terms of identity, it is only obtained through the links of an individual to the world around him. A person might believe he knows who he is but identity can only be determined by the documents our society uses it to grant it to us (LaTour 17). Identity is not who we think we are nor is it who others tell us we are. Our identity is a determined network of social constructs which give depth to our physical existence by granting us a social existence. It is still more than that:

As soon as we follow the shifting representation of the social we find offices, corridors, instruments, files, rows, alignments, teams, vans, precautions, watchfulness, attention, warnings—not Society. By tracking the token of the social it's as if we never met the two venerable figures of good sense: the actor and the system, the individual and its context. We don't even discover something that might fall in-between the two, a sort of dialectic or hybrid. No, we find ourselves following a movement that bears no relation to either the individual actor or the social context. (17)

The individual is not an individual without the context within which is exists; the context does not exist without the individual to give it meaning: the two things that give us identity are mutually dependent on one another for meaning and though they can be thought of separately they cannot be separated without destroying both parts.

What might seem a clever joke can quickly take the form of something more ominous, just as a few questions from an authority figure can quickly make one question their very own identity: “No matter how convincing we are about our own existence, we receive our identity via another alignment of circulating documents” LaTour writes shortly after his scenario of a traffic officer questioning a mysterious individual (16). Identity is not defined by one, two, or even three claims of existence. Instead it is the connections that one makes with the world in which he lives that gives depth to his identity but also validation by Society. The word society is capitalized here to represent the institution of society itself: it is not just the connections we make in our small inner-circles of family, friends and neighbors, it is the Society of all connections we make networked with those connections ours tie into, and still more connections that those make, creating the network in which society can thrive. With only one small change in perspective however, these same connections can undermine themselves, such as Vladislavic's mysterious key.

Works Cited

LaTour, Bruno and Emilie Hermant. Paris: Invisible City. Trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht. 2006. Online.

Vladislavic, Ivan. Portrait With Keys: The City of Johannesberg Unlocked. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 2009. Print.

ENL 159: "Jacob Flanders as a Self-Appointed Public Character"

Jacob Flanders is a self-appointed public character in this novel because so much of the novel is centered on his actions. The fact that Jacob has no voice of his own--he is represented through the eyes, perspectives, voices of other people--attests to this observation. Jacob himself, however, has certain qualities that make him a public figure in the society of the novel, and in the metaphors used to paint his character.

J. Jacobs defines a "public character" as one "who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character...[they] need not have any special talents or wisdom to fulfill his function...he just needs to be present...His main qualification is that he is public, that he talks to lots of different people" (Jacobs 68). Jacob, by this definition is a public character. He manages to interact with people in ways which affect them deeply, like his mother who cannot understand her son's penchant for trouble; the sea captain who chooses Jacob over his older brother for a higher education; and even the woman in the carriage, Mrs. Norman, becomes lost in a reverie about him: "Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole--they see all sorts of things--they see themselves..." (Woolf 31).

More important than these interactions with people are Jacobs interests, as he finds himself attracted to butterflies and other insects which, one might argue, could represent his fascination with people who, like insects, pervade his life. Even the way in which the book is written gives emphasis to his character as the characters around him are inclined to watch him, speak with him, speak for him; Jacob's character is so public he never has to explain himself to the reader.

ENL 177: “Journal Entry #1—Reaction to Sula by T. Morrison”

Jolene Patricia Brown

ENL 177: T. Morrison

January 12, 2009

Journal #1

Toni Morrison's work is highly political especially in terms of race relations (white/black) and sex relations (male/female). The marriage of Jude and Nel is an important marker of sex relations as well as race relations within the novel because Jude longs to be a “man” yet cannot consider himself a man until he finds a man's job, but those are reserved for whites:

It was after he stood in lines for six days running and saw the gang boss pick out thin-armed white boys from the Virginia hills and the bull-necked Greeks and Italians... that he got the message. So it was rage, rage and a determination to take on a man's role anyhow that made him press Nel about settling down. (82)

Jude longs to be a “man” and to do work that will give him a man's status, not “women's work” that he was performing in the kitchen at his job.

The more he thought about marriage, the more attractive it became. Whatever his fortune, whatever the cut of his garmet, there would always be the hem—the tuck and fold that hid his raveling edges; a someone sweet, industrious and loyal to shore him up...Without that someone he was a waiter hanging around a kitchen like a woman. With her he was head of a household pinned to an unsatisfactory job out of necessity. (83)

His dilemma—longing for manhood in a society that denies it—enlightens the predicament of many men but especially those of color because, unlike the “thin-armed white boys” and the “bull-necked” Europeans, he is not allowed the opportunity for manhood even if he seeks it out for himself. He is forced into a feminine position in white society: relegated to wash dishes in a kitchen; a job usually reserved for a woman. The message sent to him is that he is not man enough to do a man's job and it is his determination to change his forced feminine status to marry. By marrying Nel, Jude can force his way into manhood outside of the control of the white men. He dreams of being a “man” in terms of white men had failed him and “He needed some of his appetites filled, some posture of adulthood recognized, but mostly he wanted someone to care about his hurt...And if he were to be a man, that someone could no longer be his mother” (82). By having a wife and, ultimately, a family to care for Jude can make that leap into manhood without the requirement of a “job” to grant him that status. It may be harder to care for his family because his job prospects are less-than wonderful, but he can take the “man's role” to care for his family.