Sky Full of Elephants

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, racism, rape, gender and transgender discrimination, death by suicide, and suicidal ideation.

Charlie is the protagonist and the novel’s central character. Without Charlie, there’s no romantic relationship with Elizabeth, and there would be no Sidney. More so, Mobile depends on Charlie to fix the machine and release Black consciousness. Using his electrical engineering and magical thinking, Charlie turns on the machine, and he becomes its source. Already a protagonist, Charlie becomes the hero. He makes Black expression visible to everyone in the world.

Charlie is conscientious and introspective, and Campbell uses the stream-of-consciousness technique to express Charlie’s complex inner life. Charlie’s primary conflict is embracing a Blackness that defies racist stereotypes. In jail, Charlie reads a negative definition of the color black. The narrator explains, “He didn’t believe these things about himself, yet the results of his life said otherwise” (18). Growing up, Charlie’s mother tells him that Black means “being the villain in someone else’s story” (103). Charlie doesn’t know how to foster a positive view of his Blackness. The narrator says, “[H]e had no answer for whether his darkness made him evil” (18). Charlie’s character must learn that Blackness isn’t synonymous with “evil.