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
When Sophie arrives home, Brigitte is sleeping in Joseph’s arms. He puts her down in the bedroom, then comes back into the room and plays Sophie a message off the answering machine. It is from Marc, for Sophie, urging her to call him about Martine. Marc’s voice is quivering. Sophie immediately panics, telling Joseph that her mother was planning on having an abortion today. Joseph urges Sophie to keep calm and call Marc, but when she does, she gets only his machine. The next morning at 6:00, Marc calls back—sobbing, he tells Sophie that Martine is dead.
Sophie has, since reconnecting with her mother, been optimistic about the fact that the two of them could become friends, even in spite of Martine’s problems and their difficult history—but receiving the news of her mother’s death, Sophie realizes all of her wishful thinking was a fallacy.
Themes
Sophie asks Marc to tell her what happened, and Marc explained that in the middle of the previous night, he woke up to find Martine out of bed. He went back to sleep, not thinking anything of it, but several hours later when she was still not back, he went to look for her in the bathroom. He found her on the floor, covered in blood, with a “mountain of sheets” laid out on the floor—Martine had stabbed herself in the stomach, with an “old rusty knife,” 17 times. Martine died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, after telling the paramedics that she could not carry the baby.
Martine’s brutal suicide shows, once and for all, just how tortured she was by the idea of bringing life into the world—and how badly she wanted to punish herself for engaging in sex, conceiving a child, and possibly bringing another life into such a cruel, harsh world.
Themes
Sophie screams at Marc for sleeping through her mother’s suicide, but Marc protests that he tried to save her and then asks where Sophie was when her mother needed her most. Sophie hangs up the phone and falls into Joseph’s arms. Moments later, she runs upstairs and begins packing for New York, while Joseph agrees to stay behind with Brigitte.
Marc attempts to absolve himself of blame in Martine’s death by suggesting that Sophie should have stood closer by her mother and helped her through her issues. Though he’s likely only speaking out of grief, he still fails to express that as the daughter, Sophie should have been the one to receive her mother’s care, not the other way around.
Themes
At Martine and Marc’s house, Sophie finds an odd air of calm—but is disturbed by the trail of blood left behind on the stairs. Marc tries to talk to Sophie about the plans for Martine’s burial in La Nouvelle Dame Marie, but Sophie is determined not to breathe a single word to Marc.
Sophie is furious with Marc both for failing to take adequate care of Martine, and for attempting to implicate her in her mother’s choice (or compulsion) to commit suicide. It seems that Rena’s counseling has had a positive impact on Sophie’s mindset, as she now exhibits emotional fortitude and refuses to accept the blame for other people’s destructive actions.
Themes
Get the entire Breath, Eyes, Memory LitChart as a printable PDF.
That night, Sophie calls Joseph and tells him she needs to go to Haiti—alone—to bury her mother. That night, in her mother’s apartment, Sophie fights off “evil thoughts.” In the morning, Marc suggests she pick out an outfit for her mother to be buried in—she picks out a bright-red suit. Marc balks at the choice, but Sophie is firm. After a viewing at a local funeral home, Sophie calls Joseph one last time before getting on the plane to Haiti. She asks if Brigitte is sleeping, and he says that she’s not sleeping so well without Sophie.
Martine’s obsession with the color red—a sensual color, but also the color of violence and bloodshed—stands in direct contrast to Sophie’s preoccupation with the color yellow, the color of sun, warmth, and resilient daffodils. Despite this difference, Sophie wants to honor her mother’s love of red, and the color’s association with both love and violence—two things her mother passed on to her.
Themes
Marc accompanies Sophie to Haiti. They do not sit together on the plane, though they ride in the hearse together from Port-au-Prince to La Nouvelle Dame Marie. At the market in the village, Marc is wide-eyed and frightened of the Macoutes—but the villagers greet Sophie “as though [she has] lived there all [her] life.”
The last time Sophie returned to Haiti, she was determined not to forget her origins—now, she is recognized as one of her own people, while Marc finds himself an outsider in his own country.
Themes
As Sophie approaches Granmè Ifé’s house, she sees her grandmother sitting on the porch. She wonders if Granmè Ifé has been sitting there since she got the telegram warning her of the news—but as she hugs her grandmother, she tells Sophie that she knew of Martine’s death in her bones before the letter came, and even sensed her pregnancy. Tante Atie, dressed all in black, embraces Sophie too. That night, Marc, Sophie, Granmè Ifé, and Tante Atie have a private wake. As they sing mourning songs, Sophie realizes that the “mother-and-daughter motifs” of the stories she grew up with don’t come from the women in her family—rather, they are something “essentially Haitian.” That night, Sophie sleeps alone in her mother’s bed.
Sophie is beginning to see the paradox of the place she comes from: though Haitian society discounts and undervalues women, there is a matrilineal streak to the ways families continue on, and Sophie is part of a rich tradition and legacy. It’s clear that women hold some sort of reverential power in Haitian families in spite of the attendant pain, suffering, and trauma passed down through each generation.
Themes
After collecting Martine’s body at the funeral home and looking at her face one last time, the group follows her coffin up the hill and through the market to the cemetery. A small procession joins them, and by the time they reach the gravesite, many villagers and mourners shake gourd rattles, blow conch shells, and beat drums as the priest sings a funeral song. As the rites end and men begin shoveling dirt into Martine’s grave, Sophie runs away from the cemetery, tearing her dress as she speeds down the hill. She runs into a cane field, attacking the sugar cane with her shoes until her hands bleed. Soon, she hears her grandmother’s voice shouting for her, and Tante Atie’s voice echoing the call: “Ou libere?”
Sophie’s relationship with Martine was many things—most of them complicated, difficult, and even painful—but as she buries her mother, she breaks down in anger and sadness over how Martine’s life ended. Sophie is furious with how the women in her family are made to grow up and live, and sad that she could never help her mother to move on from the pain that would eventually consume her.
Themes
Sophie reflects on the place she comes from, and the stories the women there tell their children—stories that “frighten and delight them.” Sophie thinks of the lanterns in the hills, and the beloved faces that “recreate the same unspeakable acts that they themselves lived through.” Here, nightmares are passed down “like heirlooms,” and the past is something women carry through the ages. Sophie thinks of all the tales of butterflies, birds, and women who could not stop bleeding. She decides that her mother was the woman from the latter tale, a woman just like Sophie herself.
Sophie knows that the place she comes from—both the physical place and the emotional realm—is dangerous, cruel, and painful, especially for women. At the same time, Sophie doesn’t know how she can possibly separate herself from the legacy of her ancestors.
Themes
In the cane field, Granmè Ifé approaches the distraught Sophie and tells her of a place “where the daughter is never fully a woman until her mother has passed on before her.” In this place, she tells Sophie, if one listens closely in the night, one can hear one’s mother telling a story. At the end, she will always ask the same question: “Ou libere?” Granmè Ifé calms Sophie, assuring her that now, she knows how to answer.
