Daffodils are, throughout the novel, a symbol of the strength and sacrifice it takes to thrive in a place in which one is not meant to be. According to Edwidge Danticat herself, one of the first fully-formed images that came to her as she began writing Breath, Eyes, Memory was that of the dried daffodil hanging off of the Mother’s Day card Sophie Caco makes for her Tante Atie. When Danticat realized that daffodils “wouldn’t generally grow in Haiti,” she was tempted to pick a different flower—but then, the thought occurred to her that daffodils could function as a potent symbol for the resilience of Sophie and women like her—women uprooted through diaspora, transplanted from their homes and challenged to thrive in a strange new place. The daffodils Danticat writes about in the novel grow, unexpectedly and improbably, in the villages of Haiti, where they adapt, hybridize, and take on a burnt orange color. Daffodils are Sophie’s favorite flower, and she often dresses in daffodil-colored or daffodil-printed clothes. Tying in with the novel’s overarching theme of home, daffodils represent the power that women—specifically Haitian women—have to adapt and remake themselves even in impossible circumstances.
Daffodils Quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory
[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.
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.
Daffodils Symbol Timeline in Breath, Eyes, Memory
