'Sula,' Rivers, and Finnish Folklore

Although the class discussion noted several elemental qualities in the text of Toni Morrison's Sula, it ended, or at least did on Tuesday, before discussing the River to any great extent. Several details with hints of magical realism within them did stand out, but the majority of discussion focused elsewhere. Tonight I would for a moment realign focus on those qualities and compare some of Morrison's uses of elemental and natural imagery with those found in mythology, in particular the mythology of a small, hardy European country. By this, I mean that the ways in which the author presents the River share certain qualities with the Finnish depiction of the Underworld, also embodied in part by a river.

On the intuitive level, rivers should seem a positive, if not by necessity 'good' or 'evil,' force in world mythologies. Rivers, in real life, provide water and food, and are essential for irrigation of arable land, although this is perhaps less true in modern times than in early civilization. In the actuality of mythology, however, rivers are often homes to malevolent entities or spirits, ranging from the feminine or musical (Nix, Nymphs and Necks of Germanic and Icelandic lore, or the Mami Wata of African origin) to the monstrous and frightening (Vodyanoy from Russia and other Slavic countries, Water-horses from Celtic regions, or the Japanese Kappa). In tales where they appear, these creatures, whether through seduction or brute force, drag their victims underwater and drown them. The line between these spirits and the dangers of drowning is at once apparent, more so in cultures who were not obligate sailors, but present in others nonetheless.

In Finnish mythology, the connection is more blunt. As opposed to dangerous spirits which just live in the rivers, much of the rivers themselves in Finnish folklore have to do with Death. To be more precise, a single black river divides the land of the living from the land of Death, Manala, and the dead are either guided to the island of the god of death, Tuoni, by he or his varying ferrymen, or have their bodies floated down the river whole-sale to that same island. The John Martin Crawford translation of Elias Lonnrot's national epic, The Kalevala, includes the tale of one Lemminkainen, who takes up the challenge of Louhi, the 'hostess of the Northlands' in order to woo one of her daughters, and departs to the land of death. However, at the river, he alerts the spirit-sheperd Nasshut, who fires a poisonous snake like an arrow into his heart:

  Nasshut, the despised protector
  Of the flocks of Sariola,
  Throws the dying Lemminkainen,
  Throws the hero of the islands,
  Into Tuonela's river,
  To the blackest stream of death-land,
  To the worst of fatal whirlpools.

 Kalevala, Rune XIV

 Thus Lemminkainen is thrown into the river of death, somewhat akin to Morrison's Chicken Little. There is very little in common between Chicken Little and Lemminkainen. The former is a mere child, while the latter is a famed and daring warrior and pester of the gods. Moreover, Chicken Little drowned with a simple splash that "closed quickly over the place where [he] sank" (61) as opposed to Lemminkainen's tumble through the whirlpool laden death-river. The two do share one key similarity of note, and it lies in the treatment of their bodies post-mortem. When Lemminkainen's body arrives at the island of death, the son of Tuoni treats his body in this manner:

  There the blood-stained son of death-land,
  There Tuoni's son and hero,
  Cuts in pieces Lemminkainen,
  Chops him with his mighty hatchet,
  Till the sharpened axe strikes flint-sparks
  From the rocks within his chamber,
  Chops the hero into fragments,
  Into five unequal portions[...]

 Kalevala, Rune XIV

 Again, the details of the disfigurement differ, but how the Son of Death handles his treatment of Lemminkainen's body mirrors the aloof, and perhaps disdainful manner in which the white sheriff and boatman treat the deceased body of Chicken Little. Both bodies are unrecognizable to their mothers by the end of the process, and both bodies almost return to the river forever. The abrupt, immediate actions of Nasshut the shepherd mirror, in fewer words, the emotions of the boatman upon his discovery of Chicken Little's body:

            The sheriff said whyn't he throw [Chicken Little] on back into the water. The bargeman
            said he never shoulda taken it out in the first place.

Sula, 64

To the fortune of Chicken Little's mother, the bargeman does not do this, and to the fortune of Lemminkainen, his mother discovers a way to resurrect him.

The author more makes the River out to be a death-river when Shadrack and his National Suicide Day create a mob by accident. The mob, in what became an impromptu march, carries the whole of Bottom down the hills, through the white peoples' properties, down to the river. They end at the entrance to the tunnel, where they tried to destroy it all:

            They didn't mean to go in, to actually go down into the lip of the tunnel, but in their need to kill it all, all of it, to wipe from the face of the earth the work of the thin-armed Virginia boys, the bull-necked Greeks and the knife-faced men who waved the leaf-dead promise, they went too deep, too far...

Sula, 161-162

A moment of furious passion, a single mistake in judgment sent them to their demise, and those that died slid away with the force and fury of the water, some (such as the Deweys) now lost forever to the turbulent water. The tunnel, which would have connected them to the other town, which was supposed to give them so much, becomes their undoing and so the river takes them away by force. Just as Lemminkainen defies the river to prove himself, and dies, so too do the African American residents of Bottom defy it to prove themselves, to make their will known. In response, the river bites them, and they are carried down the river, nevermore to be seen alive.

The river in Toni Morrison's Sula is an unforgiving one, which swallows those that defy it and does not return them in sound form. It, much like the death-river of the Finnish Kalevala, is a boundary which permits no mortal trespassers and whose caretakers are unforgiving and disrespectful to the bodies of the dead. It shares some key details and a general function with the death river, it carries the dying to the place of their permanent demise. At the same time it would be a long reach to suggest the author based the river off of Finnish folklore. If anything what similarities they do share highlight or emphasize a human understanding, perhaps even fear, of the power water holds over the world at large. Similar to the water spirits, these depictions warn of the dangers involved in entering a river, and similar to reality, events in which a river takes an active part have all the capability in the world of going awry and killing someone.