Accidental Progress

Nicole McLaughlin
12/18/2010
AP English
Accidental Progress
In her 1974 novel, Sula, Toni Morrison develops the story of two girls’ lives: Sula Peace and Nel Write. Morrison places accidental events throughout the novel in order to help develop the characters, and to also further the plot of the story. These accidents not only define specific points in the girls’ lives, but also allow the girls to grow and develop from that one defining moment.   Because each accident helps to shape the girls into who they become, every event after that accident has a domino effect. Morrison shapes the story by colliding the events, developments, and accidents together.
The first truly defining accident of Sula happens when both Nel and Sula are around twelve years old. The two girls are playing in the fields with this little boy named Chicken Little. First, everything is going fine, and then, “Sula pick[s] [Chicken Little] up by his hands and sw[i]ngs him out…and around” (Morrison 60). This children’s game turns sour quickly, though, when Chicken Little “slip[s] from [Sula’s] hands and sail[s] away out over the water” (Morrison 60-61). It’s unclear to either girl what they had just done until the “water darkens and close[s]… over the place where Chicken Little sank” (Morrison 61). At that point, both Nel and Sula realize that Chicken Little is dead, and that they had killed him. Their first thought wasn’t of Chicken Little’s well-being, but instead asking whether the “figure [that had] appeared briefly on the opposite shore” (Morrison 61) had seen their crime. Here is where Morrison first defines both of the girls for the reader. Sula “collapse[s] into tears” (Morrison 62), but Nel keeps her composure. She reassures Sula that “[she] didn’t mean it [, and that] it [wasn’t] her fault” (Morrison 62-63). Because of this scene, the reader learns that Nel appears to be the stronger more motherly of the two girls, and Sula the weaker, more child-like half.
Later on, we see...