Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?
             While Langhston Hughes authors this poem, A Dream Deferred, it can easily be interpreted as Toni
             Morrison's description of Nel and her life of sorrow and dissatisfaction. Sula and Nel, the protagonists
             in Toni Morrison's Sula, are each the only daughters of mothers whose distance leaves the young
             girls with dreams to erase this solitude and loneliness. There is no question that Sula alleviates this
             aloneness with a lascivious and experimental life, "I'm going down like one of those redwoods. I sure
             did live in this world"(143). Nel, however, for the most part, fails terribly at realizing her dreams and
             experiencing a happy existence. Compromising her individuality, her emotional stability, and her
             dreams mark Nel's banal and unfulfilling life.
             Early in Nel's life during a trip to New Orleans, she watches as her mother is humiliated by a train's
             white, racist conductor; she watches the indignity of her mother's having to squat in an open field to
             urinate while white train passengers gaze; and she watches her mother's shame at her own Creole
             mother's libidinous lifestyle. Her mother's submissiveness and humiliation evokes a fear, an anger,
             and an energy in Nel. Her emotions intensify as she makes a declaration to never be her mother, to
             never compromise her individuality, "I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me"(28).
             Figuring that her "me-ness" will take her far, she exclaims "I want...I want to be... wonderful"(29).
             However, that trip to Louisiana "was the last as well as the first time she was ever to leave
             Initially, Nel's self-declaration empowers her to pursue that dream of independence. She gathers
             power and joy, and "the strength to cultivate a friend in spite of mother"(29). Nel ac
             ...