Previous
Intro
In Ti-Jean and His Brothers, Ti-Jean, Mi-Jean and Gros Jean are three impoverished Caribbean young men who live on a cold mountain with their deeply religious mother. Often, the boys don’t have enough to eat. Gros Jean is strong but not very smart, and Mi-Jean is smart but always has his head in the clouds. As a result, neither boy has what it takes to provide for the family. Meanwhile, Ti-Jean, the youngest, doesn’t make much of an effort; he sits around all day doing nothing. While their mother laments the family’s poverty and lack of food, she believes that God will eventually provide for them.
One evening, the family hears a strange noise outside the hut. It is the Bolom, the ghost of an aborted fetus and a messenger of the Devil. He tells the family that the Devil wishes to pose a challenge to the three brothers. Longing to feel human emotion, the Devil wants one of the brothers to make him angry. The Devil promises to grant the boy that is able to do so wealth and property. But, if the Devil succeeds in making one of the three boys angry, the Devil will eat him.
Gros Jean, being the oldest, is the first to leave home to take on the Devil’s challenge. Before he leaves, his mother reminds him to trust in God, who has created all things. Gros Jean insists that he already knows this. As he walks through the forest on his way to meet the Devil, Gros Jean comes across Frog and exclaims at how God could make such ugly creatures. Soon after, Gros Jean meets the Old Man, and asks him what the quickest path to success is. The Old Man tells Gros Jean that the only things that matters is money, and that the fastest way to acquire that is to go and work for the Devil. So the Old Man gives Gros Jean directions to a plantation that the Devil owns. After two days working on the plantation, Gros Jean has received neither a minute of rest nor a cent of pay. Frustrated, he stops counting sugar cane for a moment to take a smoke break. The Devil, disguised as the Planter, comes up to him and asks why he is taking a break when lunch hour is over. Gros Jean explains that he is tired, and the Planter encourages him to rest, while passive aggressively implying that Gros Jean should be working—after all, the more Gros Jean works, the more the Planter earns. The Planter continually addresses Gros Jean by the wrong name, and eventually this upsets Gros Jean so much that he blows up at the planter. In losing his temper, he loses the challenge to the Devil.
Being the second-oldest, Mi-Jean is the brother who has to go and face the Devil next. Leaving home, Mi-Jean also comes across Frog in the forest and, like his older brother, insults the animal. Mi-Jean also meets the Old Man, who recognizes him. The Old Man tells Mi-Jean that everyone knows about him because of his intellectual prowess. As Mi-Jean soaks up the praise, the Devil goes behind a bush and removes his Old Man’s mask and replaces it with the Planter’s.
The Planter asks Mi-Jean if he has caught the goat the Planter asked him to catch, and Mi-Jean responds that he has. But the goat is loose again, and Mi-Jean must recapture it. As he does so, the Planter begins to explain to Mi-Jean the best way to tie down a captured goat. Mi-Jean becomes frustrated at the Planter for this explanation. Sensing a way to provoke Mi-Jean, the Planter starts a discussion about how animals and humans have equal intellectual capacity. Mi-Jean, who prides himself on his intellect, soon loses his temper, and in doing so, loses the challenge with the Devil.
Finally, it is Ti-Jean’s turn to go and meet the Devil. His mother worries for her youngest son, who has neither the strength of the oldest nor the intelligence of the middle son. But Ti-Jean assures her that he has faith, the most powerful tool of all. As he walks through the forest to meet the Devil, Ti-Jean also encounters Frog, and stops to talk with him. Frog warns him that the Old Man is, in fact, the Devil in disguise. So when Ti-Jean encounters the Old Man just moments later, he is prepared, and doesn’t fall for any of the Old Man’s attempted tricks. In fact, he tells the Old Man that he knows he is the Devil, causing the Devil to take off his Old Man’s mask. Ti-Jean is afraid to look at the real face of the Devil, and so the Devil disguises himself as the Planter. He tasks Ti-Jean with capturing the same goat that his brothers were tasked with capturing. Ti-Jean not only captures, but also castrates the goat so it won’t escape again. Slightly frustrated, the Planter tries to keep his cool and asks Ti-Jean to count all of the sugar cane on the plantation. Instead of doing this, Ti-Jean orders the plantation workers to burn everything down. Later that night, Ti-Jean meets up with the Devil again, who is drunk. Ti-Jean also pretends to be drunk, and the Devil confesses to him that he misses being an angel. When Ti-Jean tells the Devil that he burned down the plantation, the Devil loses his temper, and Ti-Jean wins the challenge. At first, the Devil doesn’t want to honor his side of the bargain, but the Bolom helps Ti-Jean convince the Devil to play fair. The Devil grants the Bolom life, and God honors Ti-Jean by giving him a place on the moon.
