People, satisfied by being a cut or notch over other people, therefore like comparing merits. Criticizing the shortcomings and wrong doings of other people provide us with a sense of superiority and sometimes even makes us look down on the inferiors. However, sometimes we are in fact criticizing things that we have also done in the past. In such cases, morals and self-protection will always come into conflict. On one hand, we speak against faults on moral ground. But on the other hand, self-protection helps us to make up all kinds of excuses in order to escape from accusations, which in turn create a double standard of viewing. Toni Morrison, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, disagrees with the hypocrisy and portrays the double standard of people through the book "Sula" in 1973.
The story is based on the lives of the black community who lives in The Bottom in Ohio.
Nel 3/14/2014 #2
Nel 3/14/2014 #3
Nel 3/14/2014 #4The Bottom situated in the hills above the mostly white, wealthier community of Medallion. Sula and Nel are good friends, they are bought up under two different environments. Nel is the product of a family that believes deeply in social conventions, "Under Helen's hand, the girl became obedient and polite. Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by her mother until she drove her daughter's imagination underground" (p.18). Sula's family is very different: she lives with her grandmother, Eva, and her mother, Hannah, both of whom are seen by the town as eccentric and loose. Their house also serves as a home for Tar Baby who intends solely on drinking himself to death, three informally adopted boys, the Deweys, and a steady stream of borders. The two girls start to grow apart when Nel married Jude and chooses to settle into the conventional...