The Dew Breaker

by

Edwidge Danticat

The Dew Breaker: The Dew Breaker (Circa 1967) Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Papa arrives at the evening church service two hours early, because he is planning to kill the preacher. He parks his car by some street merchants, ensuring that he has a clear view of the entrance to the church. It has long been known that the preacher “ha[s] enemies in high places.” He presides over a Baptist church in Bel Air, a slum in Port-au-Prince. The preacher broadcasts his sermons on a radio show that airs early on Sunday mornings. In these sermons, the preacher praises Biblical figures “who’d fought tyrants and nearly died.” Six months ago, his wife died. Meanwhile, Papa Doc has rewritten the Lord’s Prayer to make it about himself. 
The fact that the preacher is being targeted to be murdered shows how morally distorted life under the Duvalier regime has become. The preacher’s “crime” is sharing Biblical teachings about resisting oppression. For a country like Haiti, with such an important freedom movement, such ideas are (even aside from particular religious traditions) intimately treasured. Yet the dictatorship has made them deadly.
Themes
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Some of the congregation at the preacher’s church cite his sermons while being tortured in prison. However, others say they hope he ceases his political messages, for his own sake and theirs. The preacher lives near the church, and there are currently four agents outside his house. Papa finds it hard to believe that the preacher would be scared of his own death, and wonders if he is also “falling for the religious propaganda.” The dew breakers use different tactics in order to be able to bring themselves to do the work they do. Some only target strangers from neighborhoods they don’t know, while others take revenge on people they do know and don’t like.
In the context of the dictatorship, it can seem as if the government forces have ultimate authority and power, while those who resist are in a position of absolute vulnerability. Yet as this passage shows, those working for the government are actually affected by the efforts of those who fight against them—even if they work hard not to show it. Indeed, it is actually very challenging to carry out the kind of work that the dew breakers do. 
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Papa tries to tell himself that, as a Catholic, he should hate the preacher for being Protestant. He tries to persuade himself that he is “liberating” the people of Bel-Air by killing the preacher. The night before, Papa Doc announced that 19 members of the palace guard had been executed for treachery. Six months ago, the preacher’s wife was poisoned by the daughter of a rival preacher, who had been bribed to commit the act. Papa has been dreaming of leaving Haiti and moving to a Haitian diasporic community in Florida or New York. He could “infiltrate” the communities of exiles who are planning a revolution. However, he knows he won’t be able to leave before he “prove[s] his loyalty” by killing the preacher.
The question about why Papa wants to flee Haiti and what he plans to do in the US is left deliberately ambiguous. It could be that he plans to leave Haiti in order to prevent revolutions being planned from abroad—this is certainly implied by the use of the word “infiltrate.” At the same time, if Papa was still entirely loyal to the government, why would he want to leave Haiti in the first place? It is possible that part of him dreams of rebelling as well. Perhaps Papa himself does not even know where his loyalties truly lie.
Themes
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Now, Papa asks a nearby boy to buy him a pack of cigarettes. He is a heavy smoker of cigarettes and cigars, and loves drinking five-star Barbancourt rum. Sometimes Papa plays games of hazard with the people he tortures, convincing them that if they win he will let them live. Last night, he dreamed that he escaped Haiti dressed as a nun. He wants to leave, but knows he needs to kill the preacher first. When the boy comes back, Papa pays him for the cigarettes and for an old history book the boy has tucked under his arm. Papa is from Léogâne. He is the son of peasants who lost all their land when Papa Doc came to power in 1957. As a result, his father became insane and his mother vanished, perhaps fleeing to Jamaica with a neighbor she loved.
Throughout the book, there are echoes of other, seemingly unrelated narratives embedded within the stories. Here, the detail about Papa’s mother possibly fleeing to Jamaica with a lover who was also her neighbor recalls the unnamed wife who also had an affair with her neighbor. The timeline means that it is impossible that the unnamed wife is the same person as Papa’s mother, but this connection nonetheless highlights how similar stories repeat across different particular, local contexts.
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Papa himself joined the Miliciens (Volunteers for National Security) at 19. He had gone to a Flag Day parade and watched the president speak. Mesmerized, he decided that he would never go back home and live the rural life of a peasant. Back in the present, the boy Papa offered money to hasn’t moved. Papa wishes he could buy a future for him and all Haitian children. He asks what the boy studies, and after he replies that he studies history, Papa makes him recite a lesson. The boy does so, nervously. Papa gives the boy some more money and tells him to leave. The boy buys food from a vendor and shares it with his friends.
Papa’s feelings about the boy indicate that he is not a totally morally corrupt person, and that he retains feelings of love and hope for his country and its people. Of course, the reality is that Papa’s actions have hardened him in such a way that he struggles to interact with others in a normal, kind manner. This is evidenced when his sympathetic thoughts about the boy turn into a demand that the boy recite a history lesson.
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Alone in his car, Papa smokes and tries not to think about the boy. When he was 19, after he saw the president speak, he joined the Miliciens and was given an ID card, a denim uniform, a gun, and “the privilege of marching all the national holiday parades.” Papa didn’t like the uniform, and thus took to wearing plain clothes. As a Milicien, Papa received the best treatment from everyone. He grew fat from eating decadently, and had countless lovers. He returned to Léogâne, where his father paraded the streets, naked. He told the officials who’d bought his parents’ land that he was a powerful man now, and they should watch out. Through this threat, he managed to get his father’s house back.
This passage explores the reasons why ordinary people might be encouraged to join the Miliciens (and in doing so commit horrific crimes against humanity). Throughout its history, Haiti has been one of the poorest countries in the world, largely due to international sanctions. As a result, most of its residents are desperately impoverished. Although this does not excuse Papa’s decision, it helps explain why gaining power and wealth through joining the Miliciens was appealing to him.
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Papa earned a reputation for being a particularly skilled and intimidating torturer. The problem was that for him, it was “becoming like any other job.” One of his victims testified in old age that Papa was remarkably clear-headed; he knew exactly what he was doing. The preacher, meanwhile, is eating supper, wearing his “best cream jacket” which he saves for Sundays. He is an elegant man, with long limbs. He is sitting with three of his deacons. The deacons are nervous for him, and they suggest hosting the service inside the house. In truth, the preacher has already made a deal with God to sacrifice his life for his country. 
In some ways, this passage serves as a counterbalance to the previous one. Whereas before Danticat encouraged the reader to consider the difficult situation that encouraged Papa to join the Miliciens, in this passage she emphasizes that Papa committed the evils required by his job with disturbing willingness.
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Quotes
The preacher has dreamed about his own death many times and doesn’t fear it. Sometimes he dreams that he is killed in brutal, horrifying ways, but in the dreams he is always resurrected. He tells the deacons that it’s time for the evening service, and that he will walk to the church alone. Reluctantly, the deacons step aside and let him pass, then follow him out the door. On the walk to church, the preacher greets everyone in the neighborhood. Everyone knows him and says hello back. He passes a shoeshine man, Léon, who poured slop on the heads of Volunteers after they arrested a group of philosophy students performing in a production of Waiting for Godot
Léon and the preacher demonstrate two different forms of resistance against an oppressive dictatorship. The preacher is a respected man, someone who holds power that in itself threatens the regime. He chooses to use this power in order to further undermine the government, thereby putting himself at risk. Meanwhile, as a shoeshine man, Léon is very poor and has almost no power. Yet he still chooses to risk death in order to perform whatever act of resistance he can.
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Léon asks the preacher if he wants his shoes shined; when the preacher declines but suggests the next day, both the Léon and the deacons smile, hopeful at the mention of the next day. The preacher then spots a ten-year-old boy who is a member of the congregation. The boy is smoking a cigarette, but when he sees the preacher he throws it away and runs off. At the church, many in the congregation are missing. The service runs a little longer than usual. The preacher passionately delivers a sermon about the day his wife was killed. He says that after she was poisoned, he could tell from her eyes that she was going to die.
This passage both reveals the respect and adoration the preacher has in his community and highlights the increasing fear of the congregation, which causes them to abandon him. It is clear that, without the dictatorship, the preacher would be a hugely popular and influential figure in Bel Air. Yet while many people still admire him, he is losing support as people realize that they are risking their lives by attending his services.
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The preacher recalls that in his rush to get his wife to the hospital, he forgot to pray. The preacher was gratified when he learned that the young woman who poisoned his wife was sent to prison, but nonetheless his guilt remained, feeling that it was his fault that his wife was killed. He begs for his wife’s forgiveness in front of the congregation, hoping that she can hear him from heaven. The deacons and other people listening feel worried. A few members of the congregation walk out, inspiring others to do the same. Léon starts to cry, thinking about his son, who is a Volunteer. Despite Léon’s bitter opposition to his son’s choices, he still lets him come home sometimes, for the sake of his wife—but also to protect himself.
Again, this passage highlights the profound moral difficulties created by life under the dictatorship. The preacher feels conflicted about the responsibility he bears for the death of his wife. While perhaps not regretting his vocal opposition to the government, he still feels intense guilt over the idea that he is the reason his wife is dead. Similarly, Léon is a principled opposer of the government, but nonetheless sometimes welcomes back his son, a Volunteer.
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Quotes
The preacher fondly recalls his wife’s appearance, saying that he fell in love with her at first sight. Her family had taken him in when he was 14; he converted to Catholicism so he could be with her, and became a preacher in order to impress her parents. At this moment, the preacher’s stepsister Anne briefly walks into the congregation, before leaving again. Anne is in cosmetology school, and the preacher can tell from the look on her face that she has no idea about the threats facing him today. His father and her mother always insisted that the two of them call each other brother and sister, without the “step.”  
This passage contains the second enormous twist of the novel. It reveals that Anne not only married a murderer, but someone who intended to kill her brother (it is not yet clear whether he will succeed, although the power wielded by Papa and other Miliciens implies that he will). Anne’s marriage was not only a compromise of her moral principles, but of her familial loyalty. 
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Up until a few days ago, Anne had been living in their hometown. She resents the preacher for abandoning the family after their little brother drowned. Now, she goes to his house, intending to wait to speak to him after he finishes the service. The preacher continues his sermon, and at this moment Papa and his men burst through the doors. Papa strangles the preacher to stop him from speaking, and he and his men drag him out of the church. Outside, the streets are empty. The preacher is pushed into a truck. The Miliciens beat him and extinguish their cigarettes in his hair. They put a blindfold over his eyes.
The awful climax of this story—and, arguably, the book as a whole—is made all the more dramatic by the fact that it has just been revealed that Anne is the preacher’s sister. Because of the non-chronological structure of the book, the reader has insight into the fact that Anne ultimately ends up marrying the person who committed this terrible act against her brother—a heart-wrenching realization.
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If a prisoner is taken to the military barracks, Casernes, there is a small chance of escape; no such chance exists from the prison, Fort Dimanche. Listening to the men, the preacher believes he is being taken to Casernes. He can hear a woman calling the name Jean. He hears a shot being fired, and is then dragged out of the truck by his legs so that his head is whacked against the concrete pavement. As he is dragged along, his skin as scraped off, and he feels that it is his actual humanity being peeled away.
This passage vividly evokes the absolute terror and degradation involved in being taken to prison. The preacher hasn’t even officially been tortured yet, but the experience of simply being arrested and brought to prison is so traumatic that he feels as if his humanity has been stripped away.
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Semi-conscious and dizzy, the preacher finds himself in a cell, surrounded by the smell of “rotting flesh.” He loses consciousness, but wakes up to the feeling of a trickle of water on his face. He tries to drink it, then finds out it is urine. 
The preacher’s torment has truly reached a hell-like level of intensity. It seems impossible that anyone in his position would be left with any hope or energy to survive.
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Back at the preacher’s house, Anne feels an epileptic fit coming and lies down on the floor. Visions of her life pass by, including the day her little brother drowned and the day the preacher left their village. She feels bad about leaving the church earlier, but she didn’t want to hear her brother talk about his dead wife anymore. She feels that her death was certainly his fault, that it was foolishly risky to preach on the radio as he did. She wants to tell him this, but in the grip of her fit she feels like she is either “dying again or possessed again.” In the midst of the fit she feels certain that her brother is also dying and that she may never see him again.
In a way, Anne’s fit recalls the vivid dreams and sleep talking that both Dany and Estina experienced. In her state of semi-consciousness, Anne has a heightened insight into her own life and the world around her. Yet this insight also has an unreal quality to it, and is compromised by the fact that she feels like she is dying.
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Papa gets an order from the presidential palace to release the preacher. His superior, Rosalie, scolds him for botching the arrest, which was supposed to happen quietly. Rosalie is one of very few high-ranking women at Casernes. She asks why Papa didn’t shoot the preacher outside church as he was supposed to, and Papa explained that he couldn’t get a clear shot. However, Rosalie replies, “You wanted him to suffer.” The palace is worried about the preacher becoming a martyr, and Rosalie says that they must ensure he doesn’t die at Casernes.
It is important to understand that the order for the preacher’s life to be spared is not coming out of a place of mercy or compassion. Brutal dictatorships like the Duvalier regime left no room for such human displays of emotion. Instead, the decision is entirely strategic. The government has realized that turning the preacher into a martyr could ultimately increase his power.
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Papa summons the preacher, planning on simply telling him to stop his sermons before sending him home. The preacher, meanwhile, is still in his cell with the handful of other prisoners who urinated on him. These prisoners are speaking now, and he realizes that the urine was supposed to be some kind of ritual cure to heal his wounds. Now, a voice instructs the other prisoners to bring the preacher over to him. Laughing, the voice tells the preacher that he is a “lucky man.” As the voice forces the preacher to walk, he can’t tell if he is actually moving or if the blood- and shit-stained walls around him are moving.
This passage explores how within the horrifying, surreal context of Casernes, it becomes difficult to tell the difference between violence and care. Being urinated on seemed like an obvious act of violence, but in fact it was care. Meanwhile, the voice promising that the preacher is “lucky” is deeply sinister, and seems more likely to be sarcastic than sincere.
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The preacher thinks about his wife and sister. He knows that Anne will stay strong, in part thanks to the strength of her Catholic faith. She can sell his house, and after finishing her cosmetology course she can find work as a beautician. He worries about her epilepsy. When their brother drowned, Anne was having a seizure and thus couldn’t go into the water to save him. Forcing himself to walk, the preacher sees light in the distance and realizes that he can see a little better than before. He reasons that perhaps the urine helped. He hears his cellmates whisper “Bonne chance” (good luck). Even though they don’t know whether he is being released or killed, they think he is lucky because either way he will be free. 
This passage introduces an important connection between Anne and the preacher. Both of them bear a superficial kind of responsibility for the deaths of people they loved: the preacher’s wife and their younger brother. Of course, neither Anne nor the preacher are actually to blame for these deaths. Yet it is obvious that they would end up feeling responsible anyway, because of the inescapable knowledge that if they had somehow acted differently, their loved ones would still be alive.
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Anne is obsessed with miracles, and she considers each time that she recovers from an epileptic seizure to be a miracle. Now, she awakes to find Léon standing over her, holding a kerosene lamp. He helps her up and tells her he has bad news: the preacher has been arrested and taken to Casernes. Immediately, Anne says she has to go. She runs off and looks back at him; holding the kerosene lamp, he looks like “both the angel of life and the angel of death.” 
In a way, Léon’s news that the preacher has been taken to Casernes does not come as a total surprise to Anne. Through her epileptic fit, she experienced a kind of prophetic intuition that her brother was in mortal danger. It turns out this intuition was correct.
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The “death chamber” is not what the preacher imagined. He had been picturing gruesome torture instruments and corpses, but instead it is just a musty office, which stinks of tobacco. Papa tells the preacher that the only thing he has to say is that “you must stop what you’ve been doing.” The preacher doesn’t believe him, and expects to soon be returned to his cell and then executed. He thinks that Papa is trying to make him feel relieved simply in order to torture him further. He begins to shake with fear. He thinks about his cellmates, moved by their kindness but also horrified by their abject condition. He is determined not to rot away in a cell before he dies.
Recall that at the very beginning of the novel, after Papa returned from his disappearance in Florida, he complained about the smell that resulted from Ka chain-smoking in their hotel room. This passage explains why Papa was so negatively affected by this smell. It reminded him of his former life as a chain-smoking torturer who spent time inside a musty office that, for all its superficial neutrality, was in reality a “death chamber.”
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Quotes
Papa moves closer and closer to the preacher, and as the preacher backs away the wooden chair he is sitting on breaks. Papa smiles. While the preacher leans back to steady himself, he touches one of the chair’s broken legs. Seizing it, he aims for Papa’s eyes, but instead plunges the broken wood into Papa’s cheek, ripping the skin down to his jawline. Papa grabs the preacher and slams him against the ground. He pulls out his gun and shoots him. Just before dying, the preacher thinks about the sermon he would give if he survived that day. He would talk about having seen hell, but also encountering “man-angels who saw in his survival hope for their own.”
Like many other moments in the novel, the preacher’s death is both profoundly heart-wrenching and strangely hopeful. The fact that the preacher was one of an extremely small margin of prisoners whose lives were supposed to be spared makes his death even more tragic. At the same time, the act of vengeance he manages to perform against Papa—along with his final thoughts about the kindness of the prisoners—creates a sense of redemption.
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Papa suggests that the preacher must now regret his actions, and the preacher considers this. He is not sure if he regrets them, even though he also has no idea if his death will have a positive impact on the country. It may inspire people to revolt, or he may just be forgotten. He sees the wound on Papa’s face as a kind of victory, because he knows that at least Papa will have to wear that scar for the rest of his life.
Here, the book circles back to the same symbol (the scar) and themes with which it began. Although it has moved backward in time, the non-chronological narrative arc of the novel provides a sense of closure as readers realize that the preacher’s prediction about Papa’s scar comes true.
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Quotes
Anne, meanwhile, is still running, spurred on by some mysterious energy. She is going so fast that everything around her is a blur. She finally reaches Casernes, where the streets are totally empty. She feels like the only person alive in the whole city. Meanwhile, inside Casernes, Rosalie barges into Papa’s office in a fury. Papa explains that the preacher attacked him, but Rosalie doesn’t seem to care. Papa walks out of the office and through the barracks, with Rosalie following him. Right by the front gate, he vomits. Rosalie tells him he should go home because he is not well, and promises that she will think of an explanation. Papa knows that she will just “do what [is] best for her.”
Surprisingly, the act of killing the preacher when he wasn’t supposed to turns Papa from a perpetrator into a potential victim of government violence—or, more accurately, into both a perpetrator and a potential victim. Under a dictatorship, even the most powerful government authorities are always at risk of being persecuted, particularly if they are seen to disobey the ultimate authority of the president. Indeed, the more powerful one gets, the greater the risk of this.
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Walking out of Casernes, Papa feels like he is about to be shot at any minute. However, he is able to walk away freely. He touches the raw flesh on his face and knows he needs to go to the hospital, but he is also aware that this might be too risky. Suddenly, a woman (Anne) runs into him. She is only wearing a nightgown, and Papa guesses that she is insane. Papa hopes that she isn’t someone he’s hurt before, because he desperately wants her sympathy. As they collide, they both say “Tanpri” (please) at the same time. His mother used to say that if two people say a word at the same time it means they will die on the same day. Papa hopes he isn’t shortening this woman’s life, and he wonders who she is.
Here Danticat finally reveals how Papa and Anne met: their lives literally collided, although neither of them were aware of the true way in which they were personally connected (via the preacher). Here, it becomes clear that the fact that Papa was put in a vulnerable position by (perhaps inadvertently) betraying government orders was the beginning of his false posturing as a victim. In a sense, his collision with Anne—for all the confusion it causes—seems almost fated.
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Papa falls into her arms and Anne manages to hold him, despite his enormous size. Sobbing, she says she needs to go into Casernes, but Papa replies: “People who go in there […] don’t come out.” He leads them away, toward his house. When they pass the cemetery she holds her breath. At home, Papa falls asleep straight away. At dawn, Anne can see that Papa’s face has stopped bleeding. She watches a funeral procession outside. She pokes around Papa’s bare house in order to find materials with which to clean his face. Finding nothing, she goes outside to buy things instead. 
The funeral procession outside is one of the final instances of the many grieving rituals portrayed in the novel. It highlights the pervasiveness of death and mourning in Haiti during the era (and perhaps also in life more generally). From one perspective, it can be difficult to witness Anne being almost tricked into caring for the person who just murdered her brother. Yet on the other hand, there is arguably something hopeful about the care she shows.
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Outside, Anne tries to avoid the cemetery. Talking to a vendor, she realizes that she must look like a “madwoman,” and that he may think she is a healer. Papa, meanwhile, is dreaming about his childhood in Léogâne. He and his mother are working in the garden, and she teaches him how to touch a shame plant. He wakes up suddenly from the sound of his door opening, and goes to grab his gun. It isn’t there, and he realizes he left it at Casernes. He suddenly remembers everything that happened the night before, and at this moment sees Anne standing in front of him, wearing a nightgown and covered in dirt and blood.
The dream Papa has about his past serves as a reminder that however monstrous he has become in the present, he was once an innocent child whose sources of joy included the love of his family and spending time in nature. It is difficult to reconcile this image with the man Papa has become, yet at the same time the fact that readers know he eventually becomes a gentle, loving person again is arguably a source of hope.
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Anne is holding honey, ginger, and a sprig of yerba Buena, which Papa knows can be mixed as a way to heal his wounds. He can’t quite remember who she is, and doesn’t want to ask her name because he is worried he will recognize it. Eventually she asks, “What did they do to you?” and Papa only says, “I’m free […] I finally escaped.” Papa thinks that in years to come, he will try to explain why he said this. He is not sure why he is so confident that they will have a future together. He can tell that she feels he was put in his path to “save” and “heal” him.
Papa’s certainty that he and Anne will have a future together emphasizes the idea that their entrance into each other’s lives was fated. Anne’s question to him shows how it was she who initially assumed he was a victim rather than a perpetrator. At the same time, this passage makes clear that Papa actively chose to misconstrue the truth—even though his claim to finally be free is actually not a lie.
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What happens next would be impossible for Anne to explain to anyone, including Ka. Part of her felt that Papa was her drowned brother, or was connected to him somehow; part of her was thinking of the saints who achieved miracles via self-sacrifice. It was both all and none of these things that made her choose to be with Papa. The doctor sews up Papa’s face, telling him that if he moves or smokes cigarettes while it’s healing he will end up looking like a “monster.” When Anne hears that the preacher died, she momentarily “slip[s] out of her own body.” The same thing happens when Ka calls and says she’s learned the truth about Papa all those years later. 
This passage shows that Anne’s decision to be with Papa was ultimately irrational, and produced by the profound trauma she was experiencing at the time. Of course, Danticat has made clear that Anne had no idea who Papa really was. Yet it is also the case that Anne made no effort to learn about Papa’s background (something quite necessary in a context where so many people were working for the murderous Duvalier regime).
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Anne tells Ka that Papa had been wanting to tell her the truth for a long time. In her head, Anne thinks of it as a miracle that Papa bought them flights to New York the day after they met, and that he never killed anyone again after that. In New York, Papa introduced her as his wife, and she didn’t object. Over time, they grew to love each other; not a passionate, romantic love, but a “strained kind of attachment.” The beginning of their relationship was characterized by mutual silence, but after Ka was born Papa opened up. They managed to talk about the preacher, but only in “coded” words.
This passage contains another surprising twist to the story of Papa and Anne’s relationship. They never actually married; rather, their marriage was just one of the many fictions produced during their reinvention in the US. Perhaps it is necessary that Anne never had to actively make the decision to be with Papa, but simply went along with the momentum of the new life they ended up making together.
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Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
The official version of the story is that the preacher killed himself, which is what Papa claims is true. Anne, meanwhile, says she believes that Papa arrested the preacher but someone else killed him. In reality, neither of them believe themselves or the other. Anne has been speaking incoherently to Ka, and only now realizes that her daughter has hung up. Anne feels lonely; she wishes she had been able to say something loving to Ka before they hung up. She is reminded of the fact that everyone close to her might disappear at any moment. The spirits that used to run through her body left the moment she heard the radio broadcast announcing that her brother had set himself on fire in Casernes, leaving “no trace of himself at all.” 
The book ends on a fittingly ambiguous note. On one hand, Danticat reminds readers of the “miracle” that Papa and Anne managed to have create a loving family despite how much violence and trauma lies in their past. At the same time, many of the book’s greatest tragedies remain resolved. There is no assurance that Ka is going to forgive her parents; their relationship may be ruined forever. Furthermore, the preacher—like thousands of other Haitians killed by the dictatorship—will never receive justice.
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Victims vs. Perpetrators Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon