Sula Character Analysis

In the segregated south in the 1940s there is a great divide of races. As the protagonist continues on her journey she finds that blacks in the south have less rights than in the north. The excerpt from Sula by Toni Morrison follows such hardships that the main character faces when making her way down to New Orleans from Ohio. The protagonist, antagonist, and foil are identified quickly. Two of these stick out more than the other being more of underlying part pushing along the problem in the story. Although the protagonist takes in these problems and finds a way around them. From the start of this excerpt the protagonist, Helene, is traveling from Ohio to New Orleans to visit her dying grandmother with her daughter. Helene finds as she travels farther south there are less colored bathrooms and a bigger segregation between blacks and whites. Helene is lighter in color, coming of to the reader as mulatto, but she still has to follow the same strict rules as the rest of the colored people on the train. One of these people is the colored woman that has four children. This woman acts as the foil to Helene’s character showing the differences between the two. Because Helene is lighter in color the women seems to assess her race
As Helene travels farther south she notices that there are not any colored bathrooms. When she asks the woman where one is she looks sympathetic and points to a field at the next stop. Helene finds that the colored restroom isn’t actually a restroom but a field at the next stop. She at first feels slight discomfort at the idea of squatting in the middle of a field but continues to do so at every stop. A part of the problem was resolved when she found a place to use the bathroom but farthermore when she stopped feeling that discomfort. By the end of the excerpt she was used to using a field as a restroom and no longer stirs under the eyes of the white men as she walks into the