Toni Morrison's 'Sula': a satire on binary thinking

The narrative [Sula] insistently blurs and confuses . . . binary oppositions. It glories in paradox and ambiguity beginning with the prologue that describes the setting, the Bottom, situated spatially in the top. We enter a new world here, a world where we never get to the "bottom" of things, a world that demands a shift from an either/or orientation to one that is both/and, full of shifts and contradictions. (80)

In my own attempt to describe Sula, I will expand upon McDowell's thesis and argue that the novel may also be read as an extended satire on binary (reductive, cliched) thinking. Because satire is a notoriously imprecise term, a clarification of its usage in this essay is appropriate.

The traditional definition of satire as a didactic art form was articulated by Horace in the first century B.C., restated and amplified by Dryden at the close of the seventeenth century, and upheld by several prominent theorists in the first half of the twentieth century.(2) In fact, as recently as 1985 Linda Hutcheon argued that parody should not be confused with satire, "which is extra-mural (social, moral) in its ameliorative aim to hold up to ridicule the vices and follies of mankind, with an eye to their correction" (43). Dryden's "Discourse concerning the Original and Progress of Satire" (1693) has largely been responsible for this view of satire. As Dustin Griffin explains, "Our reigning notion of satire as a moral art and as a carefully constructed and unified contrast between vice and virtue finds its fullest and most influential presentation in Dryden's essay" (15). According to Dryden, "Satire is a kind of Poetry . . . invented for the purging of our Minds; in which Humane Vices, Ignorance, and Errors, and all things besides . . . are severely Reprehended" (77). This definition highlights two related points which deserve attention. First, Dryden's theory of satire as correction and reformation clearly fails to describe his own satiric practice; and, second, it is intended to describe only formal verse (or Roman) satire and not Menippean (or Varronian) satire.

Regarding the first point, Edgar Johnson aptly notes that "it is hard to detect any reformatory zeal in Mac Flecknoe and the booby-trap denouement of its coronation scene" (4). The same may be said about the satires of Horace, who argues that his goal is to laugh men out of their follies - thus drawing attention to the moral aspect of his satire - but, as Griffin notes, "Satire, as Horace practices it, is considerably more diverse than laughter at folly" (8). In fact, contrary to what the satirist may claim in defense of his or her work, the satirist's primary aim has generally been to upset our conventional literary and moral expectations - not to validate them. Moreover, as John R. Clark argues, rather than attacking folly and vice, "Satiric plots regularly dramatize the triumph of folly or vice" (51). We need only recall the end of Gulliver's Travels - where Gulliver converses with his horses - or the conclusion of Pope's "Epilogue to the Satires: Dialogue I" - where Vice triumphs with great pageantry - to recognize the validity of this statement.(3)

Furthermore, it is significant that Dryden's theory is intended to describe only formal verse satire (as practiced by Horace, Juvenal, and Persius), and not Menippean satire. Like Quintillian before him and many theorists after him, Dryden draws a clear distinction between the two satiric traditions - privileging the Roman tradition of verse satire established by Lucilius (second century B.C.) and disregarding the older, more complex Menippean tradition, named after its founder Menippus of Gadara (third century B.C.). In the twentieth century, such prominent theorists as Northrop Frye (Anatomy of Criticism, 1957) and Mikhail Bakhtin (Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, 1929) have attempted to rectify this imbalance. However, Bakhtin's theory - which reverses the traditional hierarchy and privileges "dialogic" Menippean satire instead - also maintains a distinction between satiric traditions. Building upon Bakhtin's theory, Frank Palmeri's Satire in Narrative (1990) likewise favors narrative satire:

. . . verse satire does function conservatively to enforce an established cultural code by ridiculing deviations from it. However, narrative satire parodies both the official voice of established beliefs and the discourse of its opponents. In doing so, it interrogates any claims to a systematic understanding of the world. Narrative satire is . . . potentially more subversive. (6)

In Satire: A Critical Reintroduction (1994), Dustin Griffin develops a more comprehensive approach to the two major traditions of satire, privileging neither. Indeed, Griffin suggests that "to read Menippean works alongside those of Horace, Donne, or Pope is to see poetic satire, even formal verse satire, in new light. The moral design is but one of several elements. Neither tradition, in Bakhtin's terms, is 'monological'" (34). Furthermore, instead of viewing satire merely as a rhetoric of persuasion, Griffin argues that "we may arrive at a fuller understanding of the way satire works if we think of a rhetoric of inquiry, a rhetoric of provocation, a rhetoric of display, a rhetoric of play" (39). Satire as Griffin describes it may be found in either verse or narrative; however, since the novel's "rise" in the eighteenth century, this genre has proved to be the satirist's preferred form. As numerous theorists and critics have now recognized, the satirist attacks, indirectly, all kinds of unexamined and cliched thinking. In short, the satirist's primary goal is not to "teach" us moral lessons or to reform us, but to entertain us and give us food for thought.