familiar with the arrangement of marriage or the possessiveness it fosters, is unable to understand Nel's pained response. Her lack of respect for others earns Sula the entire community's hatred. Yet, when she falls in love with Ajax, she finds herself in the role of the jealous wife, just as Nel had been earlier. Ajax, noticing that Sula is becoming possessive, flees Medallion that very day. The loss of Ajax eventually drives Sula to her deathbed. Other than people visiting on official business, Nel is Sula's only visitor during her final days. The women talk but do not resolve their dispute. Sula passes away alone in bed, and when Nel finds out, she calls the police to handle the matter. Not until 1965, more than twenty years later, does Nel come to realize that it was Sula, not her former husband Jude, whom she has missed all along. The novel concludes with Nel mourning the loss of her best friend, symbolized by a loud and long cry.
             In "Sula" , Toni Morrison portrays one individual's search for identity in a stifling and unsympathetic world. She gives us two such individuals – Nel and Sula. Morrison creates two individual female characters that at first are separate, then grow together, and later are separated once more. Although never physically reconciled, Nel's self discovery at the end of the novel permits the achievement of an almost impossible quest - the conjunction of two selves. I found that it's a great book that gives us a look at these two great characters. Morrison says she created Sula as "a woman who could be used as a classic type of evil force" and that she "wanted Nel to be a warm, conventional woman." She says "there was a little bit of both in each of these women... if they had been one woman... they would have been a rather marvelous person. However, each one lacked something the other had." Morrison, thus, creates two completely different women yet allows them to me...