Breath, Eyes, Memory

by

Edwidge Danticat

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Breath, Eyes, Memory makes teaching easy.
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Chapter 1 Quotes

[Tante Atie] took the card from my hand. The flower nearly fell off. She pressed the tape against the short stem, forced the baby daffodil back in its place, and handed the card back to me. She did not even look inside.

“Not this year,” she said. […] “It is not mine. It is your mother’s. We must send it to your mother.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Tante Atie (speaker), Martine Caco
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 7
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

Tante Atie told me that my mother loved daffodils because they grew in a place that they were not supposed to. They were really European flowers […] meant for colder climates. A long time ago, a French woman had brought them to Croix-des-Rosets. […] A strain of daffodils had grown that could withstand the heat, but they were the color of pumpkins, […] as though they had acquired a bronze tinge from the skin of the natives who had adopted them.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Tante Atie
Related Symbols: Daffodils
Page Number: 20
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

Ou byen? Are you all right?” I asked her.

She shook her head yes.

“It is the night,” she said. “Sometimes, I see horrible visions in my sleep. […] Don’t worry, it will pass,” she said, avoiding my eye. “I will be fine. I always am. The nightmares, they come and go.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco (speaker)
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 45-46
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

“You’re a good girl, aren’t you? […] You understand my right to ask as your mother, don’t you? […] When I was a girl, my mother used to test us to see if we were virgins. She would put her finger in our very private parts and see if it would go inside. Your Tante Atie […] used to scream like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The way my mother was raised, a mother is supposed to do that to her daughter until the daughter is married. It is her responsibility to keep her pure.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Tante Atie, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 58
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

As she tested me, to distract me, she told me, “The Marasas were two inseparable lovers. They were the same person, duplicated in two. […] What vail lovers they were, those Marasas. Admiring one another for being so much alike… When you love someone, you want him to be closer to you than your Marasa. Closer than your shadow. […] You would leave me for an old man who you didn’t know the year before. You and I we could be like Marasas. You are giving up a lifetime with me. Do you understand? There are secrets you cannot keep.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Joseph
Page Number: 83-84
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

The story goes that there was once a woman who walked around with blood constantly spurting out of her unbroken skin. This went on for twelve long years. […] Finally, the woman got tired and said she was going to see Erzulie. […] After her consultation, it became apparent to the woman what she would have to do. If she wanted to stop bleeding, she would have to give up her right to be a human being. She could choose what to be, a plant or an animal, but she could no longer be a woman. […]

“Make me a butterfly,” she told Erzulie.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph
Page Number: 86
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Some people need to forget. […] I need to remember.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker)
Page Number: 93
Explanation and Analysis:

“Who would have imagined it?” [Tante Atie] said. “The precious one has your manman’s black face. She looks more like Martine’s child than yours.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco, Martine Caco , Brigitte
Page Number: 99
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

“Your husband? Is he a good man?”

“He is a very good man, but I have no desire. I feel like it is an evil thing to do.”

“Your mother? Did she ever test you?”

“You can call it that.”

“That is what we have always called it.”

“I call it humiliation,” I said. “I hate my body. I am ashamed to show it to anybody, including my husband. Sometimes I feel like I should be off somewhere by myself. That is why I am here.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Granmè Ifé (speaker), Joseph
Page Number: 121-122
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

I had spent two days in the hospital in Providence and four weeks with stitches between my legs. Joseph could never understand why I had done something so horrible to myself. I could not explain to him that it was like breaking manacles, an act of freedom.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph
Page Number: 127-128
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

“They train you to find a husband. […] They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee… If you pee loud, it means you’ve got big spaces between your legs. They make you burn your fingers learning to cook. Then still you have nothing.”

Related Characters: Tante Atie (speaker), Sophie Caco
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“If it is a boy, the lantern will be put outside the shack. If there is a man, he will stay awake all night with the new child. […] If it is a girl, the midwife will cut the child’s cord and go home. Only the mother will be left in the darkness to hold her child. There will be no lamps, no candles, no more light.”

Related Characters: Granmè Ifé (speaker), Sophie Caco
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 23 Quotes

“Now you have a child of your own. You must know that everything a mother does, she does for her child’s own good. You cannot always carry the pain. You must liberate yourself.” […] [Granmè Ifé] walked into her room, took her statue of Erzulie, and pressed it into my hand. “My heart, it weeps like a river,” she said, “for the pain we have caused you.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Granmè Ifé (speaker), Brigitte
Page Number: 156-157
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“The new lady,” [Eliab] said, “does she belong to you?”

“Sometimes I claim her,” I said, “sometimes I do not.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Eliab (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph
Page Number: 169
Explanation and Analysis:

“I did it,” she said, “because my mother had done it to me. I have no greater excuse. I realize standing her that the two greatest pains of my life are very much related. The one good thing about being raped was that it made the testing stop. The testing and the rape. I live both every day.”

Related Characters: Martine Caco (speaker), Sophie Caco, Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 172-173
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

After Joseph and I got married, all through the first year I had suicidal thoughts. Some nights I woke up in a cold sweat wondering if my mother’s anxiety was somehow hereditary or if it was something that I had “caught” from living with her. Her nightmares had somehow become my own. […] I looked back at my daughter, who was sleeping peacefully. […] The fact that she could sleep meant that she had no nightmares, and maybe, would never become a frightened insomniac like my mother and me.

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Martine Caco , Joseph, Brigitte
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 196
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

“My grandmother was preparing her funeral,” I said. “It’s a thing at home.” […]

“You called it home?” [Joseph] said. “Haiti.”

“What else would I call it?”

“You have never called it that since we’ve been together. Home has always been your mother’s house, that you could never go back to.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Joseph (speaker), Martine Caco , Granmè Ifé
Page Number: 198
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Because of you, I feel like a helpless cripple. I sometimes want to kill myself. All because of what you did to me, a child who could not say no, a child who could not defend herself. It would be easy to hate you, but I can’t because you are part of me. You are me.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Buki (speaker)
Page Number: 206
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“Your mother never gave him a face. That’s why he’s a shadow. That’s why he can control her. I’m not surprised she’s having nightmares. […] You and your mother should both go there again and see that you can walk away from it. Even if you can never face the man who is your father, there are things that you can say to the spot where it happened. I think you’ll be free once you have your confrontation. There will be no more ghosts.”

Related Characters: Rena (speaker), Sophie Caco, Martine Caco
Related Symbols: Dreams and Night Terrors
Page Number: 214-215
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

“There is a place […] where the daughter is never fully a woman until her mother has passed on before her. There is always a place where, if you listen closely in the night, you will hear your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: ‘Ou libere?’ Are you free, my daughter?”

My grandmother quickly pressed her fingers over my lips.

“Now,” she said, “you will know how to answer.”

Related Characters: Sophie Caco (speaker), Granmè Ifé (speaker), Martine Caco
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.