The Bottom community is initially sustained by positive signs of good luck following Sula's death: Construction of the New River Road tunnel will be done by black laborers, and plans are being made for a new nursing home. However, the smug and uncharitable jubilation of the townspeople when they learned of Sula's death is soon hushed by a plague of near-biblical proportion. The weather shifts dramatically, and an omnipotent frost deluges the Bottom with disease, poverty, and cruelty.
Without Sula as a measure of evil, mothers begin beating the children they once protected from her; young people stop caring for the old; and forgotten rifts are rekindled. The community needed Sula to keep it in balance; after her death, people have no way of knowing what is bad in order to do what they think is good.
The tunnel, which initially symbolized freedom from the grips of poverty and bigotry, betrays the townspeople. Ironically, Shadrack reluctantly leads those who rejoiced over Sula's death to the quintessential celebration of National Suicide Day. He stands high on the riverbank, like a prophet ringing his bell on Judgment Day, as he beholds a terrified flock of his community in a scene of sacrifice and judgment.
