Harlem as Heaven
The most significant symbol in the story is Harlem, but it is a complex symbol that cannot be distilled down into just one meaning. King Solomon Gillis arrives in Harlem as a man on the run fueled by stories—maybe better described as myths or legends—that it is a place of sanctuary for black men unlike any else. When he gets his first look at it, he even says to himself that he “woke up in Heaven.” For Gillis—at least first—Harlem symbolizes just that: heaven. Which for a black man means simply the freedom to enjoy rights and privileges that are actually protected by the law rather than violated and taken away.
Harlem as Hell
Gillis may wake up in heaven, from that moment on that sidewalk on that street forward, he is on the fast trek to finding that Harlem is actually his hell. And that hell comes in the form of spiral staircase that leads down to a dimly lit, smoke-filled underground cabaret where jazz is the soundtrack to his arrest and potential twenty-year sentence for dealing dope he didn’t even realize he was dealing.
Harlem as a Sewer
The author seems to view Harlem somewhere between heaven and hell on the symbolic spectrum. Perhaps closer to hell than heaven, but at least the stench isn’t fire and brimstone, though on occasion it may be worse. Trying to find decent people already calling Harlem home in the story is tough. It is, instead, painted as a community populated by those who willing to do whatever needs to be done to look out for themselves. In comparison, the man who (accidentally, he says) killed a white man in North Carolina looks like a paragon of virtue, but his fate seems sealed as soon as he stepped off the subway. Just to make it clear that there is about zero chance of Gillis ever actually living the dream of becoming the police officer he dreams of being, he is almost literally sent to live straight in a sewer. Or, at least, a teeny-tiny room with window opening letting in air that is “pollution from bottom to top—a sewer of sounds and smell.”
The Cop and the Girl
Throughout the narrative, Gillis remains obsessed with two images that confirmed his dream of Harlem as heaven. He returns to the vision of the “culled police policemans” and “the girl with the green stockings” so often that they become inextricably linked together. This is his vision, the symbolic incarnation of his plan for the magic of Harlem to cast its spell over him, offering redemption for his mistake in North Carolina and salvation for trying to do good and be honest.
The Applecart
That this plan—based on nothing more than legends related to him about the city and his own blindly faithful investment in those legends—is bound to go wrong is made symbolically clear before it even gets started. Shortly after his ill-fated meeting with Mouse Uggam who just happens to also hail from his hometown, Gillis is almost immediately struck by the first sight of those green stockings which distracts his attention just enough to cause him to collide with Tony, the grocer transporting a bushel of apples across the sidewalk. Tony isn’t actually described as having a cart, but the symbolic meaning remains the same: Gillis has upset the applecart of his own plans with his distraction by the girl in the green stockings. It won’t be the last time she causes a distraction with leads him straight into trouble.
