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
Sophie’s therapist, Rena, is a “gorgeous black woman” and Santeria priestess who once lived and worked in the Dominican Republic. In her weekly session with Rena, Rena asks Sophie about her “disappearing act” and her trip to Haiti. Sophie tells Rena about her trip, and includes learning about how every woman in her family has, for generations, had their virginities “tested.” Rena asks Sophie if she has ever hated her mother—Sophie avoids answering the question, insisting that she wants to accept the change in her relationship with Martine.
Rena is a hard-driving, no-nonsense woman who desperately wants Sophie to take ownership of her actions, confront her past, and answer for her emotions. Sophie, however, wants to suppress all of these things, and is ignorant of the continued damage and trauma that failing to identify, name, and face her pain could do to both her and Martine.
Themes
Sophie tells Rena about her mother’s pregnancy, and Rena asks Sophie if it makes her angry to hear about her mother doing “the very thing that [Martine] didn’t want [Sophie] to do” by having sex and getting pregnant out of wedlock. Sophie claims she doesn’t feel any anger towards her mother anymore—she just feels sorry for her. Rena asks Sophie about her father, but Sophie says she doesn’t want to think of the man as her father, or think about him at all. Rena points out that Martine’s failure to confront her rapist is what has allowed his ghost to “control” her.
Rena knows that the ways in which Sophie and her mother conceive of sex, love, and intimacy have been warped by the violence to which they’ve both been subjected. Rena doesn’t want Sophie to allow violence to control her in the way it has controlled Martine—she urges Sophie to see that if she doesn’t start looking her own pain as well as her mother’s in the face, it very well may start to define Sophie’s life too.
Themes
When Sophie tells Rena that she is going to visit Martine and Marc the following weekend, Rena asks Sophie to picture her mother as a sexual being. Sophie does so, but can only imagine her mother in pain, trying to be brave. Rena points out that that’s what sex is like for Sophie. Rena suggests that Sophie and Martine return to Haiti, together, and visit the cornfield that was the site of Martine’s rape—only through confrontation can they free themselves of their “ghosts.”
Rena knows that there is no “home” to which Sophie and Martine can both return—their past is full off too many scars and “ghosts.” At the same time, Rena believes in confronting the past and acknowledging the things that bar one from returning “home” in order to heal, move on, and find new senses of belonging and security.
Themes
