Sula by Toni Morrison, is a powerful novel which traces the life of Sula Peace throughout her childhood in the 1920s until her death in 1941. In the novel, Morrison explores the complex friendship between Nel and Sula. Morrison suggests that friendship is more than good or bad. Sula and Nel's relationship is volatile and can be corrupted at any time: Sula and Nel's friendship experiences both setbacks and love throughout the novel. In Toni Morrison’s Sula, Sula and Nel’s childhood friendship explores how people can still be friends despite their idiosyncratic personalities.

Due to the fact that they found a complement in each other, Sula and Nel are able to deal with Chicken Little’s  death in the same way; the death of Chicken Little makes their relationship stronger. Sharing the traumatic experiences of Chicken Little's death brought Sula and Nel closer together. Before the death of Chicken Little, their friendship starts with sharing similarities due to their opposite personality traits complementing each other. In their youth, both of them lack someone who can understand them. Nel needs a break from her mother's strict discipline, and Sula lacks the companionship of maternal love. They each become the comfort zone for each other. “Their relationship was as intense as it was sudden. They found relief in each other’s personality”: their friendship is important for each other to fill the vacuum of adolescence (53). At the onset of adolescence, people seek moral support, and in the case of Nel and Sula, "They find the intimacy they are looking for in each other's eyes" (52). Their friendship grew, naturally, without much thinking; they could always protect each other. In the novel, after Chicken Little dies, Sula and Nel's involvement in Chicken little’s death greatly shakes their childhood innocence: “Nel and Sula did not touch hands or look at each other during the funeral. There was a space, a separateness, between them”(64). Nel and Sula are both in a state of extreme mental tension, and they're still children. They had no intention of harming the boy, they were too scared to tell anyone about the accident for fear they would be accused of intending to kill him. However, in the end of the funeral, “Nel and Sula stood some distance away from the grave…….They held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth” :the fact of Chicken Little already died can not be change, the coffin stand for the uncertainty to their future and regretness that will surround Sula and Nel for rest of their life. Rather than describing the girls as panicked, Morrison described their reaction to the boy's death as almost ambivalent; this depiction shows that the girls are aware of this event and brings them closer together. Nel and Sula left the funeral hand in hand, a sign that they  were determined to put the matter behind them and keep it a secret.The sense of childhood is completely shattered at this moment, and Nel and Sula's fate is put on a path, after death of Chicken Little, their respective personalities have changed which will further separate their friendship later.

The betrayal from Sula to Nel turned their friendship into the lowest point which let betrayal completely destroy their relationship. With the return of Sula, the friendship is shattered by betrayal of Jude's with Sula, and this is one wrong that Nel cannot forgive. Sula didn't seem to think she had done anything wrong, and Nel thought Jude was the one who had done something wrong. Nel could not feel the anger caused by her predicament: “And again she thought of Sula as though they were still friends and talked things over,” but the fact that she was still willing and eager to talk to Sula under the circumstances showed that she was very repressed (110). Later in the story, Nel comes to visit Sula who is heavily illed, she breaks the silence,  and closes the gap between Sula and herself after Sula’s betrayal, they talk about how is their feeling towards this conflict, during the conversation. Morrison shows how their values are different by depicting the conversation between Sula and Nel, “What you mean taken away? i didn't kill him, i just fucked him, if we weren't such good friends, how come you couldn't get over it” (145). This completely proves that the conflict between two people is caused by their different values. Nel, who pays more attention to life and order, and Sula can do whatever they want are vividly reflected in this conflict. Their friendship will change again after Sula dies.

Despite the betrayal,their friendship still continues after Sula’s death. She wants to share her revelation with Nel that "it didn't even hurt. Wait 'll i tell Nel" (149).The passage is reminiscent of the betrayal between Sula and jude. Even in her extreme anger, Nel still thought about what Sula would say about her feelings and how they would talk about them. Even at the moment of death, the urge to talk to each other and share experiences remains. After Sula dies, Nel realizes that sula's death is very lonely and painful, and she begins to understand how deeply she misses Sula, she cries,“We was girl together, she said as though explaining something, “O Lord Sula,”she cried”Nel's life is not happy without Sula, this mean she start to regret about leaving She realized that the anger inside her had disappear, and that the person she longed love for and abandoned was not Jude, but Sula. Morrison describes Nel's cry when she realizes what she has lost as having “ no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow” (174).Their friendship end with the eagerness of Nel want Sula back, which shows deep in Nel’s heart she had forgiven Sula, she no longer see her as the “bad”

The novel discusses a lot about Sula and Nel's friendship, but within this friendship Morrison tend to questions and examines the terms "good" and "evil" The novel explores the confusing relationships and truths of human emotions and relationships, which lead to the complexity of human beings, the words good and evil which have absolute meaning, cannot be used to judge individual lives and personalities. In exploring how people find meaning in life amid conflicts of race, gender, and simple, unique perspectives. However, life is very vague, from sula's vague answer to nel, Sula refuses to give a simple answer, showing the ambiguity of herself.