My definition of metaphor would be the use of an item or object to symbolize an idea or deeper meaning. I think metaphors are useful in writing by adding complexity of meaning beyond the literal text- it allows for description or contemplation of concepts that are perhaps complex or abstract or subjective enough such that words don’t do their meaning justice, and they are instead better captured with an impression of an idea or meaning through metaphor. I think a metaphor also offers the additional advantage of allowing for more room for interpretation so that meaning isn’t strictly defined by the writer- it instead allows the reader to create their own meaning from their own perspective, and that may go beyond even what the writer may have initially imagined.
One example of metaphor in Sula could be Sula’s birthmark over her eye. I think an important role that this metaphor played in this writing may be that it represents judgment. It could also simultaneously represent Sula’s outsiderness or difference from the rest of the community as it marks her and makes her stand out or sets her apart in a literal sense in the same way that Sula’s being or personality sets her apart from her community in an abstract sense. Within this idea then, the birthmark is also able to represent judgment in how others interpreted her birthmark and also interpreted or judged Sula herself in her differentness. Sula’s birthmark would remain there for her entire life, but it was also described to have gotten darker over her lifetime. This could represent that while she as a person may have matured (as the birthmark darkened), her fundamental nature or self remained relatively constant for her lifetime. The community’s judgment or perception of Sula as a person was then reflected in their interpretation of her birthmark. The author would describe Sula’s birthmark in close proximity to the context of outside judgment of her as the community perceived her in different ways and the birthmark took on different shapes/ meanings including a stemmed rose, a snake, and Hannah’s ashes. In this sense then, the author may be attempting to convey that while a person’s existence, like Sula’s birthmark, may remain constant, society will pass judgment and interpret that person, like the birthmark, in whatever way and however transiently it’d like. So, in this novel, the birthmark as a metaphor serves a purpose of representing perceptions of Sula, allowing the author to comment on or illustrate the nature and transience of such judgment. In this way, the birthmark also ties into the novel’s broader, extended metaphor of sight, a fact perhaps compounded by the birthmark’s literal location over Sula’s eye, a placement that the author may have chosen to entail further meaning.