on either. She had no center, no speck around which to grow" (Morrison 118-119). For Sula, there is no "other" against which she can then define herself. Having rejected her community and her family, she wanders, trying somehow to define who she is. Sula turns to Shadrack, the local madman, at first because she worries that he saw what happened to Chicken Little, but then because his words truly do comfort her. Here again, one seems the way that Morrison manipulates language and its meaning in that what Shadrack doesn't say are just as significant as what he does say. Shadrack makes Sula a promise- "Always." Morrison writes, "...he tried to think of something to say to comfort her, something to stop the hurt from spilling out of her eyes. So he had said 'always,' so she would not have to be afraid..." (Morrison 157) This promise, which conveys to Sula a sense of her own permanence, serves to take away from her two essential components of a healthy conscience-fear and compassion. Julia Alvarez also uses language to show how the four Garcia girls adjust to living in a new, and to them alien, culture. The protagonist in this novel is the family Garcia de la Torre, a wealthy, aristocratic family from the Santo Domingo, who can trace their genealogy back to the Spanish conquistadors. The plot emphasizes the relationship between the four Garcia sisters, Carla, Sandra (Sandi), Yolanda (Yo, Yoyo, or Joe), and Sofia (Fifi). The narrative follows their lives as S.A.P.s-Spanish American Princesses-as they move from their "savage Caribbean island" to elite schools in New England from there to their lives as middle class American citizens in the Bronx. It is basically a story of assimilation as the girls cope with discrimination and linguistic misunderstandings. The way that English idioms manage to make the girls stumble as they struggle to "lose their accents" and become fully Americanized is symbolic of the whole process of assimilation. The Gar...
