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Chapter 20
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Farming of Bones, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Power of Memory
Dreams vs. Reality
Language and Identity
Death, Grief, and Hope
Home, Family, and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
Amabelle remembers Christmases she celebrated in Haiti. At Christmas, families would create and light lanterns; her father, in particular, “always made… lanterns shaped like monuments,” which took many months of work. Amabelle remembers asking her father to make a lantern that looked like him, so she could carry it “the whole year long.”
Fittingly, Amabelle’s memories of her childhood holidays expose how much she has always valued the act of recollection. Even as a child, she asked her father for a lantern that would preserve his features. The lantern, like memory, would safeguard his appearance against time and forgetfulness: she would have an object that would remind her of the way he looked at a certain point in time.
Themes
