Question

What irony does Morrison present about Sula at the end of the short story Sula?

What paradox occurs in the last paragraph of The Great Gatsby with respect to the past and the future?

Answer 1

Qs 1. What irony does Morrison present about Sula at the end of the short story Sula?

Ans 1. Sula is a novel about ambiguity. It questions and examines the terms "good" and "evil," often demonstrating that the two often resemble one another. The novel addresses the confusing mysteries of human emotions and relationships, ultimately concluding that social conventions are inadequate as a foundation for living one's life.

Anyway, looking at the irony that Morrison presents about Sula at the end emerges from the quote stating "The death of Sula Peace was the best news folks up in the Bottom had had since the promise of work at the tunnel". But as one reads on, the community seems to ironically suffer because of Sula's death. Now that Sula's gone "...mothers who had defended their children from Sula's malevolence (or who had defended their positions as mothers from Sula's scorn for the role) now had nothing to rub against" and "Wives uncoddled their husbands; there seemed no further need to reinforce their vanity". This seems to be such a deep side effect that is worth connecting and reflecting to one's own life.

In our lives, we are bound to run into people who we might not take in with open arms. We might become resentful towards them and it’s not until they are out of lives do we realize how great of an impact they had.

Qs 2. What paradox occurs in the last paragraph of The Great Gatsby with respect to the past and the future?

Ans 2. There are several paradoxes within the novel:

Jordan says, “I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any intimacy.”

A girl at one of Gatsby’s parties says that she “never care what I do, so I always have a good time.”

Gatsby is described as both being as wealthy like the Buchanans and as a “young roughneck.”

The party that Daisy and Tom attend offers up a paradox— Gatsby has designed his parties to be a means to draw in Daisy and Daisy dislikes the one she attends. Daisy acknowledges Tom’s philandering, offers to give him a pencil so he can take down the number of one of the girls, while she’s really at the party to be with Gatsby. Gatsby’s background is paradoxical— he gains what he wants by essentially losing himself.

Anyway, talking specifically about the last paragraph, I must say that it had Philosophical Abstractions and Paradoxes.

The novel ends with a sad Nick contemplating the historic geography of Long Island. It’s clear that the novel is trying to universalize Gatsby’s experience in some way. But there are multiple layers with respect to the past and the future:

• the transformation of America from the idyllic, pristine frontier to the polluted metropolis
• the quest to win over a lost love, or the imperfection of real love versus an ideal love
• the way the past always influences, hangs over, and directs the present
• reinvention and perseverance, the rags to riches story versus the story of impersonation and deception
• the appeal and ultimate disappointment of the American Dream, and specifically the sense that it is fading away - just as New York has been completely transformed from "green breast of land" to corrupt city, all of America is escaping the pure dreams of its people

By ending the way it does, the novel makes Gatsby explicitly represent all humans in the present and the past.

The language of the novel's ending paragraphs and the last paragraph of the first chapter links Gatsby's outstretched arms with the hopes of the Dutch sailors (the people of the past). Just as Gatsby is obsessed with the green light on Daisy’s dock, so the sailors coming to this continent for the first time longed for the “green breast of the new world.” For both, these green things are “the last and greatest of all human dreams”: for Gatsby, it’s his memory of perfect love, while for the sailors, it’s the siren song of conquest.

These two passages also connect Gatsby with the way we live today. Just as Gatsby “stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way,” so we also promise ourselves “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.” For all of us, life is all about constantly having to will ourselves into eternal optimism in the face of elusive dreams or challenging goals.

If we go with the “heavy burden” meaning of the word “borne,” then this last line means that our past is an anchor and a weight on us no matter how hard we try to go forward in life. In this case, life only an illusion of forward progress. This is because as we move into the future, everything we do instantly turns into our past, and this past cannot be undone or done over, as Gatsby attempted.

This version of the ending says that people want to recapture an idealized past, or a perfect moment or memory, but when this desire for the past turns into an obsession, it leads to ruin, just as it lead to Gatsby's. In other words, all our dreams of the future are based on the fantasies of a past.

If, on the other hand, we stick with the “given birth to” aspect of “borne” and also on the active momentum of the phrase “so we beat on,” then the idea of beating on is an optimistic and unyielding response to a current that tries to force us backward. In this interpretation, we resiliently battle against fate with our will and our strength - and even though we are constantly pulled back into our past, we move forward as much as we can.

In the final version of the last line’s meaning, we take out the reader’s desire for a “moral” or explanatory takeaway (whether a happy or sad one). Without this qualitative judgment, this means that the metaphor of boats in the current is just a description of what life is like. In this way, the last line is simply saying that through our continuing efforts to move forward through new obstacles, we will be constantly reminded and confronted with our past because we can’t help but repeat our own history, both individually and collectively.

Hope the aforementioned is free of any ambiguity and is useful to you.

Thanks