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
During Sophie’s last week in Croix-des-Rosets, she goes to school each day and cleans the yard each afternoon while Tante Atie works almost nonstop, leaving before dawn and coming home late at night after Sophie is already in bed. That Friday afternoon, though, when Sophie comes home from school, the thoughts of leaving she has been suppressing all week rise to the surface when she sees a large, brand-new suitcase sitting in the middle of the living room. Tante Atie explains that she has been working extra-hard all week to be able to afford the suitcase and some other gifts for Sophie to take to New York.
Tante Atie really wants to give Sophie every possible advantage as she moves to New York. This suggests that Tante Atie is both hopeful and fearful about what life in America will be like for Sophie—it’s clear that, like Sophie, she views Haiti as Sophie’s true home since that is where her culture is based and is where she and her family have been raised for generations.
Themes
Tante Atie begins preparing a special tea, pouring milk from a silver kettle that usually sits displayed high on a shelf. As Tante Atie pours, Sophie sees a note stuck to the bottom of the kettle—it reads “Je t’aime de tout mon coeur,” or “I love you with all my heart,” and it is signed by Monsieur Augustin. As Sophie and Tante Atie drink their tea, they both begin crying. Tante Atie urges Sophie to be strong, and gives her one of her presents: a saffron-colored dress embroidered with tiny daffodils. That night, Sophie has horrible nightmares of Martine, with daffodils in her hair, trying to wrestle Sophie to the floor.
Tante Atie pushes aside her own painful memories and associations to make things nice for Sophie. Tante Atie treats Sophie like a mother should treat her child: with respect, love, and intense care. Though Tante Atie tries to give Sophie physical reminders of the love and strength at the core of their relationship, Sophie’s bad dreams seem to foretell the hardship awaiting her in America.
Themes
In the morning, Tante Atie helps Sophie get ready for the airport and don her new daffodil dress. As the two sit down to breakfast, Sophie sees that it is drizzling outside. She asks if she has to leave even if it’s raining, but Tante Atie says that nothing can stop Sophie’s journey now. Tante Atie pulls the now-very-wrinkled Mother’s Day card from her pocket and gives it back to Sophie one more time, insisting with finality that Martine will love it. Sophie tells Tante Atie what the poem written inside says: “My mother is a daffodil, limber and strong as one. My mother is a daffodil, but in the wind, iron strong.” Tante Atie says that the poem is beautiful—but not meant for her.
Sophie wears her daffodil dress—and reads Tante Atie the daffodil poem—in an attempt to remind both herself and Tante Atie of how strong they are, and of the fact that they’re capable of pulling through this sadness.
Themes
Chabin, the lottery man, pokes his head in the open front door and tells Tante Atie that she has won 10 gourdes, or Haitian dollars, in the lottery. Tante Atie clutches her new bills and claims that Martine brings her luck. As the rain lets up, the van taking Sophie and Tante Atie to the airport arrives. They head out to meet it in spite of not having touched their breakfasts. Inside the cab, the driver compliments Tante Atie’s clean yard. “My child,” she replies, “she cleans it.”
The fact that Tante Atie refers to Sophie as her child—but not her daughter—shows that while she loves Sophie like her own, she doesn’t feel entitled to keep her, and knows she must relinquish Sophie to someone who might love her less simply because Martine is Sophie’s mother by blood.
Themes
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