Sky Full of Elephants

The event symbolizes healing because it eradicates white people, who the story often portrays as the inevitable oppressor of Black people. Malcolm tells Sidney, “[T]he world wasn’t ever equal. And the white folks who made it that way—the ones who fought, silent and spitting, to keep it that way—refused all responsibility for what it meant. You can’t imagine the inhumanity, horrors on top of horrors” (321). Now that the white people are dead, the horrors can end and Black people can build a better society. There’s no one to hold Black people back, so they can reach their fullest potential. Charlie sees the possibilities at Howard and in Mobile. The healing impacts other parts of post-event America too, including the airports. Now, airports are friendly, nonhierarchical places, where people can stay for up to seven days, and they don’t have to pay for flights. The shift away from capitalism suggests Black people can focus on themselves instead of money.

At the same time, the event symbolizes murder. Though the characters are upfront about their trauma, they regularly avoid the consequences of the event by referring to the mass deaths as “the event” or “it”—common nouns that obscure the violence. When Charlie realizes that Hosea’s machine caused “the event,” he makes the symbolism clear by exclaiming, “My God, you killed them. You turned on that machine and it started the event” (342). Hosea doesn’t contest Charlie, but he argues that all Black people killed them since the machine represents Black consciousness. Hosea admits that the event represents mass murder.

The motif of “us,” “we,” and “they” supports the theme of Black Trauma Versus White Guilt. The pronouns divide people and create conflict. There’s a “they” and a “we”—or an “us”—and the “they” is the Other or the foreign, threatening antagonist. In the story, Black people view white people as the “they,” while white people see Black people as the “they.” When Charlie first meets Sidney, she staunchly identifies as white and refers to Black people as “they.” After she uses “they” to refer to Black people, Charlie thinks, “A word used with a certain, distinguishable distance, as though explaining an infestation not even God could exterminate. And if they made up all the people left, he wondered, what exactly did she think that made her?” (68).

The motif also links to The Search for a Unified Identity. In Orange Beach, no longer denying her Blackness, Sidney uses “us” to refer to her and other Black people. As she’s speaking to Agnes, she separates herself from Agnes’s whiteness. Now, Agnes is the adversarial “they.” Additionally, the motif bolsters Creating Holistic, Inclusive Systems. Sidney thinks of Agnes as a “they” because she realizes that Agnes represents a toxic way of life. She doesn’t want to be a “walker”: She wants to live and Blackness—specifically, the system created by the Black people in Mobile—has helped her figure out how to do that.

The motif of stars appears throughout the novel, symbolizing guidance, memory, and the unseen forces that shape identity. For Charlie, the stars represent radio waves and frequencies—hidden signals that Black people have always transmitted to one another. As he works on the machine, he realizes that Black consciousness itself is a kind of frequency, an energy that has always existed but has been deliberately suppressed. This aligns with the novel’s emphasis on retrieving ancestral knowledge and harnessing collective power.

For Sidney, stars become a symbol of connection and self-discovery. As she drives away from Mobile, she sends a message to her father using the stars, mirroring his belief that they contain meaning. This suggests that, even as she distances herself from Mobile physically, she remains spiritually linked to Charlie and her Black heritage. The night sky also contrasts with the daylit world of Orange Beach, where whiteness exists as an “idea” rather than a race. The dark sky, endless and uncontainable, symbolizes a Blackness that cannot be erased or compartmentalized.

The final image of the novel, with Charlie drawing power from the stars to activate the machine, reinforces this symbolism. The stars, and by extension Blackness, are not just a source of wisdom but an active, life-giving force—fuel for transformation.