Victims vs. Perpetrators Theme Analysis

The Dew Breaker explores how life under a dictatorship and its aftermath unsettles clear distinctions between victims and perpetrators. While the book at no point suggests that perpetrators of violence should be excused for their actions, it also highlights how the Haitian Duvalier regime compelled many people to commit violence who might not otherwise have done so. Furthermore, it shows how the regime forced people to make difficult or impossible choices, which often placed them in the role of both victim and perpetrator. Instead of suggesting that the regime made personal ethics irrelevant or impossible, it highlights the necessity of critically reflecting on the ethical decisions people make in the highly complicated context of a dictatorship.

Papa was one of the many people tasked with enacting state violence on the civilian population. Yet after fleeing Haiti and making a new life in the U.S., he not only covers up his role as a perpetrator, but in fact pretends that he was a victim of the regime. Clearly, this doubles down on his already horrifying crimes. For his daughter, Ka, realizing that her father was not the victim she had always thought but in fact a perpetrator of violence is deeply disturbing and effectively turns her world upside down.

Over the course of the book, the details about Papa’s past life working for the regime emerge, inviting the question of whether he was also a victim as well as a perpetrator. After revealing that he was “the hunter… not the prey,” Papa tells Ka: “I did not want to hurt anyone.” This seems plausible, as the regime placed a great deal of pressure on people to hurt others (often under the threat of death); moreover, after leaving Haiti Papa commits no further violence. Although on one hand Papa is explaining that he would never have tortured and killed people if it hadn’t been for the pressure of the state, he also seems to still be in denial about the fact that he did commit evil. As other parts of the book show, while the dictatorship placed people into extremely difficult ethical situations, everyone has the choice not to comply with the pressure to enact harm, though this often means risking death.

Another way in which the regime pressured people to become complicit in violence emerges through Rézia’s story about her childhood. In the U.S., Rézia tells her friends that back in Haiti she was raised by her aunt, who ran a brothel. One night a man in uniform raped Rézia, who was still a child, having demanded access to Rézia from her aunt under threat of death. Again, although this does not excuse the actions of Rézia’s aunt, it highlights how life under the dictatorship placed normal people into extremely difficult situations. Rézia’s aunt was undoubtedly complicit in violence by allowing the man access to the child under her care, yet was also a victim of the murderous violence the regime, which prevented her from protecting Rézia in the way she otherwise would have.

The book also explores how the binary of victim and perpetrator becomes mixed up through the interconnection of friends, family, and community members who have different relationships to state violence. Perhaps the most obvious example is Anne, who unwittingly marries the man (Papa) who killed her brother, the preacher, but remains married to him and helps keep his secret after learning the truth. Anne is clearly a victim of the violence that took the life of her brother, yet she is perhaps also complicit in choosing to remain married to Papa.

Another example is Anne’s brother himself, the preacher whom Papa kills. Before this murder, the preacher’s wife is killed by the state, and he feels a that “He could never shake from his thoughts the notion that his wife’s death had been his fault.” In one sense the preacher’s wife’s death is absolutely not his fault. The preacher cannot be blamed for the fact that they live under a repressive dictatorship where his sermons are unreasonably branded as heretical. At the same time, it is understandable why he would feel guilt over the fact that his actions led state authorities to persecute his wife.

Overall, The Dew Breaker illustrates the many ways in which the victim versus perpetrator binary is complicated, but it is also careful not to use this to exonerate the perpetrators. The most important way in which the novel achieves this is through representing the stories of those who refused to be complicit in state violence, even if this meant facing death. For example, Freda fled because she refused to sing at the National Palace, a choice that would have endangered her life. While the threat of death is (understandably) enough to make many people feel that they are forced to become complicit in violence, Freda took a stand: “I made a choice that I’d rather stop singing altogether than sing for the type of people who’d killed my father.” Freda’s use of the word “choice” serves as reminder that, while the dictatorship blurred the boundaries of victims and perpetrators, this does not mean that the choices of those living under it should escape ethical scrutiny. Danticat ultimately argues, then, that although the line between victims and perpetrators of violence is often a blurry one in particularly dire circumstances, the individual always has some level of agency in deciding which side of this binary they fall toward.