t what ultimately matters is their friendship. At the end of the novel, Nel feels a sense of sorrow. However, she realizes that "all the time, I thought I was missing Jude" (174), when in fact she was missing Sula, her closest friend for almost her whole life. Ignoring her opinion about Sula's actions with Jude, she longs for the Sula saying, "We was girls together. O Lord, Sula, girl, girl, girlgirlgirl", a cry with "circles and circles of sorrow" (174). Nel realizes that what mattered wasn’t really how she and Sula differed but rather it was the strength of their friendship which overcame any conflicting conceptions of evil that they might have had. ...
