In Toni Morrison’s Sula, black bodies have little value and are used and discarded. The death toll is high, but there isn’t a whole lot of anguish or despair associated with any of the deaths. In fact some of them happen so quickly the reader might miss them. The death of Plum by his mother’s hand echoes the killing of Lennie by George in Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men in that they appear to be “mercy killings” of disabled individuals by those who claim responsibility for them.
When Eva’s son, Plum, returns from war he is coping with PTSD. He deals with the complex emotional trauma by using drugs (heroine, I believe?). Plum is possibly Eva’s favorite child, the one to whom she intends to leave everything but when he returns from war, he is profoundly changed. He retains his “sweet, sweet smile” and acts animated, all while falling farther and farther into drug addiction (45). Eva clearly loves her son a lot, but she is also disappointed in how things have turned out. One night she goes down to his room and holds him and rocks him in her arms. He wakes slightly and is comforted by his mother’s presence. Eventually she pours kerosene over his body which he interprets as “some kind of baptism, a blessing…[e]verything is going to be all right” (47). Then Eva sets the kerosene alight and leaves the room, retreating back to her room as others rush to put out the fire. Though it seems like lighting someone on fire would be an extremely violent way of killing them, the reader does not get to see that anguish, and the framing is almost peaceful with Eva’s detached “Is? My baby? Burning?” (48).
At the end of Of Mice and Men, George shoots Lennie in the back of the head for several reasons; perhaps it is because George has decided that Lennie is a danger to others, or maybe it is because he is afraid of what will happen to Lennie at the hands of the other men or the authorities, or because he doesn’t believe that Lennie can fend for himself. At any rate, George does love Lennie and, like Eva, he feels responsible for Lennie. George tries to keep Lennie calm and speaks soothingly to him about the farm they had been planning on buying; like Plum’s, Lennie’s death is relatively peaceful.
Both George and Eva decide that Lennie and Plum, respectively, are better off dead. Maybe to a certain extant, that is true, however all agency is taken away from both disabled characters. Neither is given any say in his fate. But since George and Eva take responsibility for Lennie’s and Plum’s deaths, they should both have taken more responsibility for their lives. More engagement, understanding, and accommodation might have saved these lives. It is not right for George and Eva to decide that Lennie and Plum cannot fit into this world because of their disabilities and to eliminate them from it without trying to change society. “Mercy killings” become merciful for the able-bodied perpetrator and not for the victim.
It appears that both Eva and George feel remorse for what they have done, but they also both feel that their actions were necessary. Slim consoles George in the final scene by telling him that he “had to do it” (107). Eva feels enough guilt that she attempts to stop Eva’s suicide by immolation. Hannah is still alive when she and Eva are put in the ambulance but Hannah dies on the way to the hospital. There is a little ambiguity though. Could Morrison be suggesting that Eva kills Hannah on the way to the hospital? Does that, too, qualify as merciful? For Hannah or Eva?
Word Count: 623
I pledge: Krista Beucler
A post script: If you need a little more intersectionality on your Instagram, check out Aaron Philip (@aaron__philip), a black, trans, disabled model <3
