Shadrack Case

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There are many characters in Sula that illustrate Morrison’s use of psychological borders and boundaries being created and, subsequently broken, to paint a picture of the overall mood and tone of the people and the overall unfortunate state of affairs for Blacks in Medallion, Ohio’s Bottom. The character that illustrates this best is arguably, Shadrack. Shadrack is one of the main characters introduced in the prologue, his parents were residents of the Bottom and he was born there as well. When the United States enters World War I Shadrack goes off to fight for the country. While Shadrack is away engaging in battle he has several harrowing and dreadful experiences, during the last of which he experiences some form of serious physical trauma that causes him to lose consciousness. He is so traumatized and shell-shocked by what he has seen in the war that when he wakes up in a military hospital, he is out of his mind with fear. This massive fear causes Shadrack to become a drunkard but also caused him to manifest anomalies and boundaries within his mind that were not necessarily real, but absolutely not helpful to his overall mental health. One great example of this is when Shadrack is in the military hospital and “realizes” that there is something wrong with his hands “…just as he was about to spread his fingers, they began to grow in higgledy-piggledy fashion like Jack’s beanstalk….With a shriek he closed his eyes and thrust his huge growing hands under the covers.” (Morrison 19) Shadrack

Works Cited

Duvall, John N. The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and

Postmodern Blackness. Chicago: Palgrave Macmillan 2000

ENotes Editors. ENotes on Sula ENotes.com. ENotes LLC. 2002. Web.

accessed 26 Nov. 2014

Morrison, Tony. Sula New York: Vintage 2004

Moynihan, Daniel P. The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, Washington, D.C.,

Office of Policy Planning and Research, U.S. Department of Labor 1965

The New York Times, October, 1973. Inaugural book review issue

Price, Kevin "The Significance of the Character Shadrack in the Novel Sula by Toni Morrison" StudyMode.com 06 2009 http://www.studymode.com/essays/The-Significance-Of-The-Character-Shadrack