57 pages • 1 hour read
Cynthia BondRuby
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Gris-Gris Dolls
As Ruby, Maggie, and Ephram leave Ma Tante’s shack, the old woman hands a gris-gris doll to each of the three children. A gris-gris is an amulet used in African and Caribbean folk spiritualism to protect against evil. Ruby’s doll represents several things: the ways she is failed by her community, her spirituality, and the burden of her trauma.
When Ma Tante offers the dolls to the children, she knows that they have not absorbed the necessary power to protect them. This symbolizes her inefficacy in helping Ruby. Despite knowing that Ruby is being raped and feeling sympathy for the girl, Ma Tante doesn’t dare to stand up against the “wheel of the world” (255). Ruby is failed in similar ways by everyone who finds out about her abuse. She is blamed, ignored, and re-victimized by a community whose very epicenter protects men like Reverend Jennings.
Ruby’s doll has a lodestone tied onto its back. Lodestones are naturally magnetized minerals, but the word “lodestone” can also mean anything with the power of attraction. With her unique ability to see “haints,” Ruby is a human magnet for spirits like the tarrens and the Dyboù. Her body and her home become a haven for the forgotten souls of the dead.
Lastly, the lodestone on the doll’s back represents the burden of Ruby’s trauma. She carries around agonizing memories and a sense of self-loathing instilled by a lifetime of sexual abuse. In Chapter 20, a young Omar Jennings proclaims that “not all souls [rise]” after killing his abusive parents (224). Though Ruby is innocent, the reverend’s abuse puts a similar weight on her soul, rendering her unable to rise until she can overcome her past and finally cast off the weight of her self-hatred.
White Lay Angel Cake
Ephram’s goal throughout the first few chapters of Ruby is to give Ruby a white lay angel cake baked by Celia. The delicate cake symbolizes his gentle, nurturing love, which has no strings or expectations attached. After the rest of her community has failed her, Ephram’s support helps Ruby regain a sense of autonomy and self-worth.
Most of the men in Ruby’s life want to take from her and hurt her. The reverend, the johns at the Friends’ Club, and the string of rapists in town all dehumanize Ruby, commodifying her body and claiming parts of her for their selfish pleasure. Through decades of abuse, Ruby starts to view herself as less than human. She believes that sex is the only power she holds and doesn’t think she is worthy of love.
Ephram breaks this pattern by showing care to Ruby with no expectations in return. His dogged determination to give her the white lay angel cake symbolizes his persistence in getting past the walls built by her trauma to understand her whole self. When he tries to deliver the cake, Ruby at first lashes out at him, knocking it into the dirt, but upon witnessing Ephram’s tears, she picks the cake off the ground and eats it. This scene mirrors the way she pushes Ephram away as she grows to care for him, intentionally hurting him because she doesn’t feel worthy of receiving his love. After she reclaims her personhood, however, she opens herself up to the safety and joy their love brings both of them.
At the end of the novel, Ruby vows to give selflessly to her ghost children the gifts of self-sufficiency, courage, and self-esteem. She notes that she will give these gifts like white lay angel cake, passing on the same kind of nurturing and strengthening love Ephram bestowed on her.
The Dyboù
The Dyboù is a shadowy, evil presence that haunts Ruby after she returns to Liberty. It is the literal manifestation of Reverend Jennings’s cursed soul and symbolizes Ruby’s unhealed trauma. The Dyboù continues to torment Ruby and holds her back from progressing in life until she can free herself from its grasp.
Before Bond reveals the nature of Ruby’s trauma, it is foreshadowed by her interactions with the Dyboù. In their first encounter, the Dyboù steals into her room and rapes her. Ruby is both ashamed of and aroused by the interaction. She begins to play the part of a rape victim, calling herself a “whore” and worse. As she brutalizes herself, she “be[comes] what he called her” (70). Her identification with these derogatory names and her willingness to hurt herself during her encounters are examples of the way she punishes herself for her past. The continued presence of the Dyboù symbolizes how her childhood trauma and the lies fed to her by her abusers threaten to ruin her adult life.
The Dyboù relentlessly chases Ruby’s children. He seeks to consume their souls just as the reverend destroyed the lives of so many children. Ruby could not keep herself or her friends safe, so she tries to make up for this by protecting the ghost children from the Dyboù.
In her final confrontation with the Dyboù, Ruby banishes him by reclaiming her personhood and denying the stigma of her abuse. She shouts, “I ain’t your whore” and proclaims that she is “not meant for using” (261). This moment marks a turning point for her character as she lets go of the shame and self-loathing that resulted from her abuse. Though the repercussions of her trauma will be a part of her forever, she will not let them destroy her life.
