Throughout Sula, the combative elements of fire and water are closely linked to the ever-present motif of death. As a result of the constant references to these elements, the novel projects qualities of creativity and destructiveness that continually transform the images of nature. Among the many motifs, fire is perhaps referred to most frequently.
The first character to die from fire is Plum, whom Eva sets ablaze. The nature of his death is foretold in how he gets high from drugs: His bent spoon is black from "steady cooking." When Plum is burning in his room from the fire that Eva set, it is Hannah who says to Eva, "He's burning, Mamma!" Eva casually responds in false disbelief, "Is? My baby? Burning?" And, on the day that Hannah dies by fire, there is an unnatural, intense heat as Eva rationalizes her role in Plum's burning.
Sula's return to the Bottom after a ten-year absence portends death associated with fire. She confronts Eva and threatens her with the same means of death as happened to Plum, whom Sula knows Eva set on fire. Sula says to Eva, ". . . maybe I'll just tip on up here with some kerosene and — who knows — you may make the brightest flame of them all." Later, when Sula visits Nel, Nel asks her if she wants a cool drink. Sula answers, "Mmmm. Lots of ice, I'm burnin' up," foreshadowing her eventual death by a fever that is described as a "kind of burning." And just prior to Sula's dying, when she wakes from a dream, she is "gagging and overwhelmed with the smell of smoke," although nothing in the house is on fire. Ironically, as Sula dies, she experiences "liquid pain"; she remembers, in death, the promise of a "sleep of water always," and how she would "know the water was near, and she would curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry her, and wash her tired flesh always." Sula and Plum are the only characters in the novel who so completely embody the images of fire and water at their deaths. Generally, the women in Sula die of fire, traditionally a masculine element, and the men in the novel die of water, a feminine element.
