From the start of the novel’s very first chapter, Morrison aims to show the destructive effect of white male-dominated society in the lives of her characters. Cynthia Davis notes that, “All of Morrison’s characters exist in a world defined by its blackness and by the surrounding white society that both violates and denies it (Davis 217).” The tale of the Bottom highlights the history of white duplicity and mistreatment of blacks that caused the town on the side of the hills to come about. Playing on his slave’s ignorance, a white slave owner gives the freed slave not the promised valley “Bottom�

This problem of lack of recognition by white society is further complicated by the nature of society, which is based on power relations. Just as Helene cannot openly go against the conductor, neither can Jude fight back against his oppressors. He stands in line for nearly a week hoping for the chance to work a masculine road building job, “real work” as he calls it, instead of the waiter position he currently holds (81). After even the skinniest of immigrants is chosen before him, Jude finds the need for another person to recognize him and his manhood and to share in the pain a racist society has burdened him with. Nel quickly accepts his marriage proposal, for she too seeks acknowledgement as an individual and enjoys having someone to recognize her independent of Sula. Early in life Sula and Nel discover their status as the Other, understanding that “they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden them (52).”

Sula and Nel create “something else to be” in light of their situation, just as Morrison does not attempt to portray the black community fighting to gain rights from dominant society (52). Instead she focuses her narrative on the black community where the white is the Other and contact between the two races has little effect on daily life. By immersing the reader in the black community, Morrison makes “white ignorance of that concrete, vivid and diverse world…even more striking (Davis 217).” The bargeman’s immediate conclusion that Chicken Little was drowned by the boy’s parents as well as his reflections on the cursed black people and the burden of their rehabilitation that is placed on white society seem all the more absurd and ignorant having read Morrison’s revealing depiction of the black community in the pages before; this depiction reveals anything but such stereotypical notions of blacks. The author’s portrayal of the community works against white stereotypes, de-objectifying community members and displacing the dominant power structure.

Even the distinction between good and evil eventually breaks down in the novel. Morrison foreshadows this relationship early on, describing the proximity of the ice cream parlor that “cater[s] to ni

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