Analysis on Character’s Behavioral Alienation in Sula

As a woman writer with multi-layered vision, Toni Morrison exhibits herself distinctly in American literary canon, becoming the most prominent black female writer. In her novel Sula, she abandons traditional narrative method, inaugurating a new viewpoint to describe living conditions that are often overlooked among black community, aiming at revealing the alienation of black souls caused by racial discrimination for a long period. Combined with the method of close reading, the paper explores three forms of behavioral alienation in the novel. The first is concerned with the alienation of black males who are originally ordinary citizens at the bottom of a hierarchy having transformed into executioners of the tragedy with the erosion of false values related to some comprehensive factors concerning family and social environment. The second alienation is manifested as the distortion of sexual relationships through the transgression and encroachment of marriage ethics. The last is addressed as the loss of national responsibility as well as identity recognition among whole black communities.