SULA’S REBELLION AGAINST THE BLACK CONVENTIONAL SPIRIT IN TONI MORRISON’S SULA

Abstract

SULA, a novel written by Toni Morrison, tells about a black woman who rebels against the patriarchal system, racial oppression and class discrimination as the conventional values in Bottom society, where the blacks live.This thesis focuses on Sula’s Rebellion against the black conventional values as the indicator of her feminist spirit in Toni Morrison’s Sula.Sula as the main female character breaks and rebels the conventional values surrounding her. The strongest influential factors that shape and influence Sula’s rebellion are coming from the society, family and friednship. She breaks the patriarchal culture and the racial problems within her society by rejecting marriage and having free sexual partner. For those reasons, Sula is named a pariah and evil. Therefore, this novel is interesting to analyze because the story of the novel teaches us many things in life, especially about black woman struggle. Using Marxist theory and sociological approach, they give a series explanation on how the economic power determines the consciousness and the existence of men. The main source of all oppression is indeed the higher economic people to oppress the lower economic people. The Bottom society is dominated by the ideology of white which put the black as the lower economic people live in the wrong system of oppression, especially black women. The applied literary theory, Black Feminism is taken to give a clear reading over the black women as the victims of oppression. It is used to talk about patriarchal system and racialism as the idea of feminism spirit in Tony Morrison’s Sula. Having pressed down by the white ideology and neglected by the white feminist, racial issues become the lead issues for black woman. The research is done through library research that uses data from libraries and cybernetic resources. Here, the method of analysis is inductive method. It analyzes the data from specific cases to a general conclusion. Furthermore, In terms of theory, Afro-American feminism The goal of composing this thesis is to make clear understanding and detailed analysis of the main female character’s rebellion seen in the novel and how her rebellion reflects feminism. Moreover, this is significant to understand Afro-American women and their struggle against oppression of patriarchal system and racial problems in their society. With expectation, most black women finally have the consciousness of the wrong system that lock their chance to have the same occasion in many aspect of life. Moreover, they are already able to behave and act freely in their society with no segregations and any label of dissimilarity in many aspects of life.