59 pages • 1 hour read
James McBrideThe Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A 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 Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store serves as a motif for the theme of Building Community Across Cultures. Its first owner, Rabbi Yakov Flohr, greatly values generosity and inclusion: He “believed the Talmud empowered him with the gift of making everyone around him happy and comfortable, including Negroes, whom he saw as fellow immigrants” (96).
The grocery store is as much a part of his commitment to bringing people comfort and building community as the shul he founded. After Moshe purchases the store from Rabbi Flohr, Chona continues her father’s legacy of generosity to the point that the store “never made a dime” (223). Heaven & Earth is Chicken Hill’s only Jewish grocery store, but people from different backgrounds find community as well as nourishment there.
The grocery store provides the setting for several key events. Moshe and Chona meet and fall in love in one of the back rooms. During their marriage, both characters foster strong intercultural relationships. For example, Moshe opens his theater to Black performers and audiences with his wife’s encouragement. In a moving display of community, the Ludlows’ Black neighbors begin “a steady trek to the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” after Chona’s illness leaves her bedridden (31):
They filed in day and night, bringing soup, fresh garden vegetables, pies, and country remedies, as well as warm laughter and jokes for the kind, crazy Jewish lady who forced her husband to open his theater to the colored and who extended so much credit to the colored families of Chicken Hill that neither she nor they had any idea of who owed what (31).
The grocery store reaches its ultimate meaning as a motif for community across cultures when it becomes a haven for Dodo. A room in the store’s basement transforms into “a junkyard of joy, complete with mops used as broomsticks, old comic books, chalk, rocks, arrowheads, and wires” that reflects the once morose Dodo’s transformation into “a living embodiment of l’chaim, a toast to life” (109). When Doc Roberts comes to the store in Chapter 11, Chona and Dodo prove the strength of their bond by defending one another, even at great personal cost. The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store gives the novel its title, one of its most important settings, and a motif for Building Community Across Cultures.
The Mezuzah
The mezuzah is a motif for the theme of The Balance Between Mercy and Justice. The word “mezuzah” is Hebrew for “doorpost” and refers to a parchment containing specific verses from the Torah enclosed in a protective casing. Traditionally, mezuzahs are affixed to the doorways of Jewish homes, but this particular mezuzah is designed to be worn as a pendant and has a message engraved on the back: “Home of the Greatest Dancer in the World” (3). Moshe had the mezuzah made for his friend Malachi, who “politely begged” (63) that Moshe give it to Chona instead.
The pendant is introduced in Chapter 1 alongside the mystical Malachi and the murder mystery. The chapter’s mentions of divine justice and the mezuzah’s discovery with the bones of the reviled yet anonymous man help to establish the connection between the pendant and justice. The motif foreshadows Doc Roberts’s demise when it reappears in Chapter 20: “But in the confusion of the moment, he’d somehow—he never did figure out how—snatched a pendant off Chona’s neck” (258). The mezuzah falls into Roberts’s hands because of a terrible deed that cries out for justice and yet goes unpunished by Pottstown’s leaders and law enforcement. The mezuzah gives the reader hope that he will not escape justice because Chapter 1 establishes that the pendant is found with a skeleton in the old well decades after the main plot.
In Chapter 29, the mezuzah plays a decisive role in Doc Roberts’s downfall. He goes to the lot with the temporarily open well to dispose of the pendant, the only physical evidence of his crime. With the help of the mezuzah, the circumstances that facilitate Doc Roberts’s death, which might otherwise appear as a string of unrelated events, instead become the slow yet steady work of karmic or divine justice. The mezuzah plays an important role in the novel’s plot, foreshadowing, and theme of justice.
Marbles
Marbles symbolize generosity in the novel. Chapter 9 describes “a game [Chona] played with several neighborhood children” (109) in which she accepts marbles as payment for food. When Dodo comes to live with the Ludlows, he joins in the game and also surreptitiously returns the other children’s marbles to them. This doesn’t bother Chona, who “loved Dodo’s generosity” (110). This underscores the symbol’s meaning and shows the similarities between Chona and the boy she comes to cherish as her son.
After Chona’s death, marbles serve as reminders of her great generosity to those who love her. In Chapter 22, when Moshe cleans out the grocery store’s basement, he discovers a barrel “full of tiny toys, marbles, and knickknacks that she had collected to dole out as gifts to Dodo and the neighborhood children” (276) and is moved to tears. Indeed, Chona is so closely associated with generosity that Nate Love II still remembers her and her “magic marbles” when almost all other memories of his tumultuous childhood have faded (386).
Marbles also play a major role in Dodo’s friendships with Monkey Pants. Monkey Pants draws “Dodo’s mind out of its fog and depression, yanking him out of the dread that soaked him every second” (266) at Pennhurst by sharing his blue marble with him. This act of kindness and generosity is all the more moving, considering that the marble is a gift from his mother and his only possession. Dodo’s curiosity about the object catalyzes the boys’ friendship and motivates them to develop their own language. Like Chona before him, Monkey Pants gives Dodo hope and comfort before ultimately giving his very life. Marbles symbolize generosity and contribute to the characters’ development and relationships.
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