Katie H Sula Pt. 2

A passage from the second part of Sula struck me in the very beginning when Sula comes back to visit and sees her mother for the first time in ten years. Her mother is not being very welcoming and has this to say, "If folks let somebody know where they is and when they are coming, then other folks can get ready for them. If they don't- if they just pop in all sudden like-then they got to take whatever mood they find." (92) I think the reason this passage stood out to me was because of how I can see the situation from both Sula and Eva's perspectives. Sula wanted to feel welcomed, and after having been gone for so long expected a bit of a different homecoming. However, she has been gone for so long without a word home, and a built up sort of resentment has formed in her Grandmother and she does not feel that Sula deserves a welcome with open arms. This reminds me of past scenes in Sula and the different ways that Eva had treated her children in the past. She has already lost two of them and might feel as though she should have been treated better by Sula. This theme of family and love is also shown here, because the two have not seen each other in so long but still have hostility towards each other. Should their reunion really be this hostile?
Another passage that gave me a reaction is when Sula is thinking about Ajax, "but her real pleasure was the fact that he talked to her. They had genuine conversations. He did not speak down to her or at her, nor content himself with puerile questions about her life or monologues of his own activities." (128) This made me think of all the other men Sula had been with, and how this passage just further shows the type of "relationship" she had with all these men she was sleeping with. No conversation, no talk, just sleeping with. It seems to me that she starte to notice that some men were good, and that she could enjoy the company of a man and it could be something that she might actually want.