Day of Tears

Throughout the novel, rain appears any time there is an important event in Emma’s life. When Emma is speaking to her granddaughter at the end of the novel, she reflects on this: “Seems like whenever something important happened in my life it was accompanied by rain” (166). Rain is linked throughout the novel to the character of Emma. The title of the work itself reflects the rain of the slave auction when Pierce Butler sells Emma to Mistress Henfield, the beginning of the main tragedy in the novel. The author uses rain in order to connote divine tears that also lend themselves to a kind of apocalypticism that is alternately described as being “hard as sorrow” (4), “hard as stones” (7), and “fiery sorrow” (14). The emphasis on the hard, stony, and fiery nature of this rain reflects the anger of the slaves, alienated from their homes and loved ones during the slave auction. This apocalyptic, divine wrath is also linked to the destructive capacity of maternal tears, implying that the tragedy these slaves face will bring about the downfall of slavery itself.

The rain also helps Emma at various points throughout the novel, as it provides a shelter for her and