56 pages • 1 hour read
Toni Cade BambaraThe Salt Eaters
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1980A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Obie pauses in the locker room of the Academy of 7 Arts while getting ready to exercise. He thinks about the splintering that has occurred in the academy between different staff members and teachers. He also thinks about aligning with groups outside of the academy, including the Women for Action, and moving off the grid. However, these actions seem unlikely. Presently, people are working on the Spring Festival. He believes that Velma’s presence kept people from splintering, and it took eight people to replace her. He wonders where Velma is.
Obie acknowledges he is stalling and “not taking care of business” (94). He tries to motivate himself to exercise with the promise of the sauna and massage afterward. He thinks about Velma’s mental health getting worse and their sex life. Someone calls Obie’s name, but he ignores them while putting on his shoes. He hears a guy named Bobby play the electric guitar and thinks about his brother, Roland, being imprisoned in Rikers for assaulting a woman.
Then Obie thinks about how he and Velma lost their child when they were running a bookstore. Looking at the gym, he reflects that when Velma and others were taking karate, the gym was cleaner. Outside are a group of men on motorcycles and women waiting around for them. Watching these folks, Obie considers how women he dated before Velma also miscarried or aborted their pregnancies. He recalls how someone called Velma a “crackpot” because of her declining mental state (100).
Chapter 5 Summary
Nadeen sees Velma’s face change during the healing. She thinks about other moments that have unnerved her, like going into the cellar alone or babysitting alone. The unnerving feeling goes away, and Nadeen stands up straighter and calmer. Minnie hums and Velma groans, thinking about Obie’s dirty talk. Minnie tells Velma she has to choose her cure.
Back on the bus, Celia and Nilda look at each other’s hats. In the alternate timeline when Fred drives the bus into the marsh, he meets his late friend, Porter, and they discuss firsts, like the first time they had an orgasm.
At the healing, Nadeen feels like she is part of something important. While Velma moves between the present and past, Nadeen thinks about their godmother, Sophie Heywood, and her own pregnancy. When Minnie asks Velma if she can “afford to be whole” (106), people in the circle check their watches. Only five minutes have passed since Dr. Meadows left. Some members of the academy think about an upcoming meeting with Doc Serge and about catching the bus, which Fred will drive, afterward. Other people focus on praying for Velma, and the narrator describes how some patients fight against being healed.
Cora thinks about Dr. Meadows as well as her friend Anna, who sighs and calls on the Lord in the healing and during card games. Cora thinks about the patient Minnie healed earlier—the one that climbed in her lap—and mothers. Minnie explains that when she says afford, she is not talking about money, and she demands that Velma answer her. Velma realizes Minnie is not talking about money and, hearing music, recalls ice skating. The spinning on the rink becomes spinning mud mothers in her mind. Meanwhile, Nadeen remembers other healings, such as revival healings and ones that involve dancing and animal sacrifices. However, they weren’t the real thing, unlike Minnie’s healings.
The narrator moves to another moment from the past. Lorraine, Jan, and Velma are working on pottery wheels in an art class. They discuss how interracial sex can cause a Black person to lose their rhythm. Another memory comes up: Velma, Ruby, and Jan watch Robert practice golf in the house. Jan and Robert talk about a young man they are worried about. After Robert leaves, the women compare the issue to a pottery issue. Ruby jokes about various kinds of analysis, and the other women laugh. In the next memory is Velma spins on a piano stool with her baby, talking to Mama Mae, the baby’s grandmother, as Obie works on academy documents.
In the healing session, Velma insists that health is her right. The narrator describes when the phrase “Health is your right” was put over the Southwest Community Infirmary archway in 1871. Its geographical position in relation to the academy is also described. The narrator also describes other local places, like the Regal Theatre and the gaslight in front of the Russel Estate that bus drivers regularly hit. Dr. Meadows looks at the infirmary, then walks away, recalling his father’s comments and passing by various people, young men, then old men talking to young girls. He stands out in Claybourne because of his light skin, and people question what race he is. He thinks about how he is from the country.
Buster, Nadeen’s husband, listens to Doc Serge discuss money and religion. However, all Buster wants is information about the pageant for the Spring Festival for his essay. He heard it will be a reenactment of a slave uprising. However, the pageant has always been kept secret by the Brotherhood. Academy members try to convince Buster to work with committees rather than on his paper. Buster also talks to Ruby but ends up frustrated and considers lying in his paper. A man named Donaldson considers the same action nearby. He has not gotten information about the academy’s store of guns, so he considers inventing a report.
Doc Serge flirts with nurses and tells Buster to study law. He demonstrates the law of gravity by dropping a towel and a bar of soap. They compare supply and demand to pimping. Buster recalls how Doc Serge advised against Nadeen getting an abortion. Doc Serge talks about principles that govern humans and the age they are in, but not the topic of Buster’s essay. Finally, Doc Serge recommends that Buster talk to Dr. Arias and the Hermit. Minnie is running late with the healing, and as Doc Serge walks toward her, he says a litany of self-love.
Chapter 6 Summary
Palma gets off the bus and hugs Marcus. The previous day, Palma found an old picture of Velma. The picture was taken before Velma changed her behavior, which included traveling more, randomly visiting Palma, and having negative feelings. One morning at breakfast, Velma bit through her glass. She also asked Palma about the reincarnation of people who died by suicide. Palma introduces Cecile, Mai, Nilda, Chezia, and Inez to Marcus instead of asking about Velma. The women are interested in getting something to eat.
Marcus suggests barbecue. Palma tells Marcus her period stopped. After she found Velma dressed strangely looking for tampons, her period came early, then stopped after just a day and a half. She tells Marcus something is wrong with Velma. Marcus does not say Velma has other people to worry about her but instead hails a cab. The barbecue place has fire and smoke coming out of it. Palma becomes angry at Velma for disappearing, and in the cab, they pass by a tree planted in 1871 by free Black people.
In Doc Serge’s office, Sophie, Velma’s godmother, nauseously leans over the trash can. She thinks about Velma connecting with both political and spiritual activists. Sophie feels pulled into the ground under her, and a healthy Velma is at the center of the Earth. She considers how hard it was to remain silent when she heard about Velma and plans to remain silent until the new moon. While sitting still, she recalls Velma choosing to marry Obie instead of Smitty. She also thinks about her own relationship with Edgers, who helps out around her house. While spinning in Doc Serge’s chair, she thinks about the biblical story of Lot and about Mama Mae.
Fred walks through the infirmary yard, where young men are waiting for young women and a couple makes out. He avoids stepping on a bird on the ground, comparing it to the birds spotted on the bus. He has to stifle his nausea as he passes wine drinkers. Then he talks to a newspaper boy and sees preparations for the festival. He considers other festivals and parades from the past, including a bonfire with Margie. Fred recalls Porter wanting to be invisible. Porter, studying with the Hermit shortly before he died, reminded Fred of when Wanda joined a Muslim group. Fred considers visiting the Hermit and heads into the infirmary.
Chapters 4-6 Analysis
As in the previous section, the novel moves between the past and the present. This structure can be described as a “barrier falling away between adulthood and child [...] Always the choice. But with attention able to change directions as sharply and matter-of-factly as the birds winging toward Claybourne” (105). Velma and the people who are part of her community become caught up in memories and thoughts. These reveries once again cause delays. Obie, Velma’s husband, is “[h]iding out. Stalling” (94) in the gym locker room. His hesitation to do anything—exercise in this section and go to Velma’s healing in a later section—can be compared to Minnie’s and Fred’s delays in the previous section. The characters’ thoughts and actions reflect the structure of the narrative, which is more cyclical than linear. They demonstrate the Fracturing in Black Activism by comingling the past and present and jumping between narrative perspectives.
Being stuck in the past and unable to escape is part of many Personal and Public Health Conditions in the Black Community. Velma’s mental health crisis affects everyone directly related to her, as well as people she may not realize she is connected to. Obie repeatedly thinks about how people in the academy call Velma a “crackpot” (94, 100). Her mental health conditions impact her coworkers and family members, though derogatory terms like “crackpot” indicate a lack of support from her community. This reflects the era’s general cultural hostility toward people with mental health conditions. Palma, her sister, thinks that “Aunt Velma’s sudden appearances on the sofa or in the bathroom or in the family budget were jarring, that her visits completely wrecked the order of the house and everybody’s timetable,” (142), but she normalizes how Velma’s actions affect other people. This and Minnie’s healing rituals emphasize an alternative to treating Velma and others experiencing mental health crises poorly; Palma counters her children, who want to ostracize their aunt. As such, community care is presented as a healing alternative.
Healing mental health conditions is explored in other ways in these chapters. In faith healing, just as in therapy, the patient must want to change and take an active role in creating change. Minnie tells Velma, “You have to choose, sweetheart. Choose your own cure” (103). Minnie empowers Velma to discover her own path out of depression. Psychological wellness is described as healing a divide and becoming whole: “[T]he divinely healthy whole Velma waited to be called out of its chamber, embraced and directed down the hall to claim her life from the split imposter” (148). The process of Velma’s recovery from her mental health crises is described as visions of finding and joining with her lost half. Women must heal and be the path out of the problems the Black activist community faces, reinforcing the theme of Uterine Issues, Sexist Oppression, and Reproductive Justice.
Internal divisions of the self are reflected in external fracturing in Black activism. Velma’s husband, Obie, notes how “Camps were forming threatening to tear the academy apart [and he] wanted wholeness in his life again” (90). He feels that the academy would be more effective if the factions within it stopped feuding. The camps are divided over whether spiritual or material concerns should be the focus of the academy. One camp:
argued relentlessly now for the Academy to change its name from 7 Arts to Spirithood Arts and to revamp the program, strip it of material and mundane concerns like race, class and struggle. The other wanted ‘the flowing ones’ thrown out and more posters of Lenin, Malcolm, Bessie Smith and Coltrane put up (93).
In addition to these feuding camps within the academy, there is a divide between it and the off-campus group Women for Action. Obie wants to bring this group into the academy as part of his desire for wholeness. In the end, the Black community will need to embrace both spiritual and material concerns to heal; the two categories are closely connected.
The Women for Action, as well as Obie, have concerns about uterine issues, sexist oppression, and reproductive justice. Velma’s sister, Palma, had issues with her menstruation around the time of Velma’s mental health crisis. Palma says, “my period stopped” (141). She then thinks, “That was not the way to say it. But how to explain the moony womb and the shedding of skin on schedule?” (141). She struggles to explain the significance of menstrual changes to the man in her life, Marcus. Menstruation can be deeply affected by stress, and Palma’s strange period here reflects her distress about her sister. Another example of uterine issues is Velma’s miscarriage. It is not the first that Obie has experienced: “[T]hey kept killing his babies. Junk food addicts, toxemic pregnancies, miscarriages [...] abortions. Pills and foams” (99). This is an example of how men want to control women; Obie considers women’s decisions about their own bodies a threat to his masculinity, represented by his unborn children. This is another fracturing in the activist community; even as Obie wants to incorporate Women for Action into his activist group, he harbors his own misogynistic beliefs. This paradox indicates that reproductive justice and the end of sexist oppression are necessary for Black people to achieve liberation.
One uterine issue, motherhood, is connected to the motif of mud. Velma continues to explore her visions of mud mothers in this section. One example of this is “mud mothers [...] Spinning, and then the women by the turnstile covered with leaves, covered with mud” (115). In the novel, mud is connected to wildness and madness, as well as the past. In African diasporic religion, mud is also connected to forming life, linking it to the theme of uterine issues, sexist oppression, and reproductive justice. Another motif and symbol that is developed in this section is salt. Sophie thinks, “You never really know a person until you’ve eaten salt together” (147). Eating salt symbolizes going through hard times here.
This section also uses music to link the different people and places in Claybourne. Musicians play instruments at the academy, such as “Bobby taking his Jimi stance” (96) with an electric guitar. This references Jimi Hendrix, the legendary Black guitarist. Another example is music playing in Velma’s thoughts of the past. Minnie notes how Velma’s “frequency was lowering as she danced away from the humming toward music of an earlier moment, the radio by the bed” (102). This example illustrates how music moves the characters through time. It also indicates how music will need to unite the characters and fix the fracturing in Black activism. By the novel’s end, the many different Black voices will have united into one cooperative band or choir, forming the content of the book.
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By Toni Cade Bambara
