Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma
Virginity and Violence
Home
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past
Summary
Analysis
Inside, Martine unpacks her suitcase and hands out the things she has brought: spices, diapers, and clothes. Martine suggests Granmè Ifé move out of the village and into a more convenient town, but Granmè Ifé only wants to go to a notary to make sure that her land is left to the right people.
Granmè Ifé feels that home, tradition, and togetherness are important, and is loath to uproot her family. By contrast, Martine, now “Americanized” just like Sophie, values convenience and ease over hard work and tradition.
Themes
That night, Sophie lies in bed, listening to Martine and Tante Atie talking and reminiscing outside on the porch about the stories their mother used to tell them, the pains they suffered as girls, and the difficult, unforgiving place from which they come—in an instant, Martine says, everything can be lost.
Discussing suffering and pain are different from confronting them—though Martine and Tante Atie can name the things that happened to them in the past and lament their difficult youths, neither of them has yet really reckoned emotionally with the traumas they’ve endured.
Themes
