Essay Questions

Elucidate Sapphira Wade’s magical realism.

Naylor writes, “She (Sapphira Wade) could walk through a lightning storm without being touched; grab a bolt of lightning in the palm of her hand; use the heat of lightning to start the kindling going under her medicine pot…She turned the moon into salve, the stars into a swaddling cloth, and healed the wounds of every creature walking up on two or down to for.” Unmistakably, Sapphira Wade exhibits a mystic power which is uncommon among conventional humans. Her inordinate supremacy sets her apart from the other womenfolk of her epoch; she is an astonishing female due to her unorthodox mysticism.

Provide a psychoanalytic elucidation of “ flames that dance at the back of her (Mama Day's) head."

Naylor elucidates, “There’s more to that Christmas Eve fire than meets the eye- much more. Miranda frowns and refuses to think of the flames that dance at the back of her head. Little Willa didn’t deserve that kind of end.” The flames denote unconscious torture which Mama Day sustains ascribed to the bereavement of Willa. Her endeavors to circumvent thinking about the flames are correspondent to Repression, which she exploits to dodge the agony which is exemplified in the flames.