Sky Full of Elephants

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, death by suicide, and suicidal ideation.

The book’s title appears in the story multiple times. Herald says, “I’ve always thought of it like a sky full of elephants. It’s up there, been up there, heavy too. All wisdom and memory… sorrow” (328). Yet Herald doesn’t specify what “it” is. Later, Fela tells Sidney, “All the trauma of all our lives […] Herald says it’s like a sky full of elephants” (400). Thus, elephants become a symbol of the trauma of being Black in the United States. The elephants represent the pain of racism, the memories, and the “wisdom” that Black people have preserved and maintained. As racism is longstanding and transcends generations, the trauma is heavy, like an elephant.

The symbolism also plays on the idiom “the elephant in the room,” meaning a glaring issue people want to avoid or ignore. Arguably, the machine forces the figurative elephant to drop. As the machine represents collective Black consciousness, and Blackness in the story, is inseparable from racist trauma, the elephants fall on the white people. Unable or unwilling to recognize their suffering, the white people drown themselves.