Chicken+Little


 * Chicken Little** is twirled around by Sula and accidentaly thrown into the river, where he subsequently drowns.
 * A white bargeman discovers his corpse and brings it to an indifferent sheriff at Porter's Landing, then dumps his corpse back to where he found it.
 * Sula and Nel react differently to the accident; Sula bursts into tears and Nel is calm and collected.
 * During the funeral, Sula feels no guilt, while Nel is torn with guilt.
 * Pivotal point of Sula and Nel's life: Chicken Little's death symbolizes the death of their innocence.

//"He would have left him there but noticed that it was a child, not an old black man, as it appeared, and he prodded the body loose, netted it and hauled it aboard. He shook his head in disgust at the kind of parents who would drown their own children. When he wondred, will those people ever be anything but animals, fit for nothing but substitutes for mules, only mules didn't kill each other the way niggers did. (63)"

"The sherrif said whyn't he throw it on back into the water. The bargeman said he never shoulda taken it out in the first place. (64)"

"Nel and Sula stood some distance from the grave, the space that sat between them in the pews had dissolved. The held hands and knew that only the coffin would lie in the earth; the bubbly laughter and the press of fingers in the palm would stay aboveground forever. At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together. They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the raod on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter. (66)"//



=Part II=

Chicken Little dies in Part I so he does not play a role in Part II. However, he is mentioned when Eva accuses Nel of being responsible for his death.

"I did not watch it. I just saw it" (Nel in regard to Chicken Little's death) - 170 "How come it felt so good to see him fall?" (Nel in regard to Chicken Little's death) - 170