The narrator describes the birthmark over Sula’s eye, which darkens with age, as “a stemmed rose” (52). Shadrack sees it as a tadpole—“the mark of the fish he loved” (156). Jude saw a copperhead. Most of the inhabitants of the Bottom concluded that “it was Hannah’s ashes marking her from the beginning” (114). For everyone who looks at her, it’s a marker of difference, physical evidence of what set Sula apart from everyone else in the Bottom. The birthmark is also a projection of the viewer’s own fears, interests, or desires. Shadrack, a Christ-like figure, is the only character who makes no judgements about Sula. Likening the birthmark to his favorite fish may be an indication of his favoritism toward her; it may also refer to his image of her, fixed on that moment in her childhood when she went to him for succor.

Jude’s interpretation of the birthmark signals danger. He projected onto her the recklessness that he possessed, unable to take responsibility for his own desire to escape from the life he had created with Nel. The town, which had decided that Sula was inherently evil, believed that she was predestined to bring danger and to love no one—not even her own mother.