Sky Full of Elephants

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

The novel centers around the event, producing the theme of Black Trauma Versus White Guilt. Initially, the characters struggle to understand why white people drowned themselves en masse. Before Sidney’s white mother drowns herself, Sidney tries to speak to her, but Elizabeth remains silent. This silence underscores the disconnect between white individuals and the Black suffering they’ve long ignored, suggesting that guilt is not only inescapable but also immobilizing. Sailor touches on the reason for the event when he says a walker told him, “[It] felt like a bomb went off. Bomb in his mind and his heart” (189). Later, Hosea explains his thought process: “Turn it on, let loose all that grief, and repair our broken selves. Or leave it be and continue on as lesser people in a fucked-up world” (342). Hosea’s words frame the event as both a moment of reckoning and a form of forced reparations, implying that the weight of historical violence, once fully confronted, is inescapable for the oppressor.

Charlie realizes that the machine functioned as a “bomb,” and the machine killed the white people.