Scarlet Morning

Salt is a prevalent motif in the novel, first described in the Prologue as falling like snow or ashes that billow in the air, pile on buildings, and encrust everything. Salt congeals in the soured sea, forming floes that crystallize into a solid pack that traps ships and isolates the islands. The salt can be blinding and caustic, burning skin with too much direct contact. From the first lines of the narrative, salt is integral to Stevenson’s setting and worldbuilding, emblematic of the progressive degradation of the characters’ world. It also represents a crucial element of the mysterious supernatural forces at work in the Dickerson’s Sea.

The symbolism of the salt evolves across the narrative, taking on new significance for each character. For Viola, salt represents her future, which is empty, devoid of purpose, potential, or adventure. She laments, ‘When I look ahead, I don’t see anything—just white. [Chase] had a golden age. All I’ve got is salt” (176), believing that Chase lived through a golden age that is now dead and inaccessible. For Chase, the spreading salt pack represents the past she is trying to escape. The encroaching salt hints at a time before the Great Blow, and even farther back, when Dickerson’s Sea was part of a larger world that has been lost.

As the story progresses, Chase views the salt as representative of a kind of balance. When she and Viola eat salt-preserved food from a scavenged ship, Chase remarks that salt is “a strange thing […] too much, and it’ll suck you dry… but too little, and all the fresh water in the world won’t do you any good. A little salt, in just the right amount, makes the water stick. Salt preserves, just as salt destroys” (158-9). At first, Chase’s observation is literal: Salt can destroy with its caustic qualities, but it can also be used to preserve foods, and it is necessary for human life. Later, this duality takes on metaphorical meaning when Chase uses the example of the sailors preserved in the salt pack. She repeats the refrain that salt both preserves and destroys, but here it represents memory or story, which can either preserve the truth, bury it, or erase it entirely, highlighting the novel’s thematic exploration of The Relationship Between Story and Truth.