The Salt Eaters

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Salt

Salt is an important symbol and motif throughout the novel. In moderation, it represents a cure. For instance, Sophie recommends using it in a poultice for snakebite. However, in excess, salt represents poison. Ahiro, Obie’s masseur, says it’s good to cry sometimes because the “body needs to throw off its excess salt for balance” (164). Also, eating salt together represents going through hard times. Sophie thinks, “You never really know a person until you’ve eaten salt together” (147). Going through hard times with someone else allows one to understand the other more fully. Salt symbolizes hard times in this work; if it’s not channeled right, it can be harmful, but it can be a source of healing.

In addition to these symbolic meanings, salt appears as a motif that links different times, like the past and the present. Velma recalls how Sophie and Daddy Dolphy carried a salty bucket of oysters: “You could see they’d been at it awhile, the salt line on their shins like a hem Mama Mae might puff with chalk” (228). This is a happy memory—salt is compared to marks used for sewing. When considering the past, Sophie calms herself by thinking about “Calamus in the salt marshes” (152), a kind of flower growing in the marshes. Salt has both positive and negative associations throughout the novel, reflecting other dualities, like Velma’s split self and the factions in activist groups.

Music

Music is used throughout the novel to connect various people and locations. Velma’s visions and memories include music. For instance, she thinks about a time when “the music rumbled in her hands, her feet, against her behind on the bench, all around her [...] the music was her own” (226). Music also appears in different parts of Claybourne. There was “drum talk of the dance studio tete tete bak a ra answered by the kabate dada rada from the park” (245). This passage includes the sounds of drums, emphasizing the auditory. Many musical references in the novel are song titles and/or lyrics. One example of this is the jazz song “Nature Boy,” which has been recorded by many artists, including Nat King Cole. Sophie and Dolphy dance to this in one of Velma’s memories.

Music appears on the inside and outside in Claybourne. Some of the passengers on the bus driven by Fred are musicians, and Fred considers how he “wanted to be a musician” (77). He brings the musicians and Velma’s friends to Claybourne. Furthermore, music is used as a way to describe the rhythm of conversations. When Obie and Velma get into a debate about his affair and her working too much, she asks, “Can we settle on one theme for this dialogue before the variations get too cumbersome?” (232). Theme and variation are ways of structuring music. Improvisational variations are especially common in jazz music. Improvisations can only happen when birthed from structures, however, and both forms are needed for the Black community. The only necessity is a common direction.

Mud

Mud is a symbol and motif that represents mental health issues and uterine issues. Frequently, mud is associated with motherhood. Velma has visions of “ancient mud mothers” that represent life outside of society’s boundaries—a life of wildness (38). Mud also appears without mothers as a way to describe Velma’s mental state: “Her mind running like mud” (219). This is how she felt during a prophetic dream that Sophie helps her interpret. Velma’s mental health requires her to accept the psychic part of herself—this muddy part. When working toward joining the different parts of herself together, Velma considers how “[s]he would not have cut off Medusa’s head” (257). The novel goes on to state, “She is thinking, watching the mud come up worms between her toes” (257). Mud is associated with the Greek mythological figure of a snake-headed woman, Medusa, here. Snakes and serpents, common religious and mythological symbols, often make appearances beside mud in this novel. Rather than being wholly negative, these symbols represent the value of dark and wild things in balance.

Shawl

The Salt Eaters ends with the symbol of the shawl. Velma throwing off Minnie’s shawl represents her transformation, rebirth, and journey toward wholeness. The narrator mentions the shawl in one of the first descriptions of Minnie, foreshadowing its role in Minnie’s healing practice and Velma’s recovery at the end.

Later, when Fred wanders past the healing when he is looking for his treatment room at the infirmary, Velma stands out to him, “done up like a mummy in a shine-in-the-dark shawl” (269). The very last sentence of the novel compares the shawl to a cocoon that Velma escapes. The shawl “drops down on the stool a burst cocoon” (295). Velma, once transformed, combines her political and spiritual selves. Comparing the shawl to a cocoon evokes a caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly; the caterpillar liquefies in a cocoon, and an entirely new body is created in its place. This parallels the way Velma must endure painful visions, like reliving her attempt to die by suicide, to come out whole on the other side.

The shawl also has religious and spiritual connotations. At the end of the novel, Velma makes her spiritual powers work for the real-world Black community as she drops the shawl and enters the physical, concrete world. The Black community needs a connection between the spiritual and the material, and Velma will deliver it. She will be a concrete spiritualist instead of an abstract one; the shawl will not be needed in her new life of action.