Breath, Eyes, Memory

by

Edwidge Danticat

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

Memory, Storytelling, and the Past Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma  Theme Icon
Virginity and Violence Theme Icon
Home Theme Icon
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past Theme Icon

Toward the end of Breath, Eyes, Memory, Sophie Caco states that she comes from a place “from which you carry your past like the hair on your head.” For the Caco women—and, Danticat suggests, for Haitian women more generally—the lessons, traumas, and stories of the past are as inseparable from a woman’s journey as the hair rooted in her scalp. Over the course of the novel, as the jumble of stories and parables that defined Sophie’s youth mingle with the painful tales from her female relatives’ pasts, Danticat suggests that while one can indeed seek to be liberated from their past, one must never forget that past—memory is a heavy burden, but a necessary one.

Throughout the novel, Danticat uses stories, fables, and folktales—often violent or disturbing in nature—to show how the women of Haiti try to keep the past alive. Though the past is full of unpleasantness and violence, the Caco women and their friends and neighbors cling to its stories desperately, unwilling to forget the collective past that has shaped them. Edwidge Danticat relays a combination of original tales and Haitian folklore throughout the novel—stories which all feature, at their hearts, lessons about the follies of girls and the pain of becoming a woman. In one story, a little girl agrees to accompany an attractive red bird to a distant land, only to realize the bird wants to feed her heart to a foreign king. In another, a woman who cannot stop blood from spontaneously spurting out of her skin visits the Vodou goddess of love, who tells her that in order to stop the bleeding, she must renounce her humanity and become a butterfly—a fate to which the woman quickly agrees. The literal stories of the past that populate the novel are often violent as well—from Martine’s story of her rape at the hands of a paramilitary soldier (or Tonton Macoute), to the stories and memories Granmè Ifé and Tante Atie trade with Martine via cassette tapes mailed to and fro, to Sophie’s musician husband Joseph’s artistic preoccupation with slave songs and spirituals that tell stories of hope in the face of violence and despair. All these stories, which in many ways define Sophie’s life, add up to a horrible weight—but ultimately, as Sophie chooses to carry them with her through her life, Danticat shows that bearing that weight is worth the struggle. Though Sophie inherits pain and trauma from the women who came before her, she also inherits a sense of solidarity, purpose, and wisdom. “Young girls,” Tante Atie says at one point in the novel, “they should be allowed to keep their pleasant stories.” Women, on the other hand, must shoulder the pleasant, the unpleasant, and everything in between in order to be the arbiters of their familial and their cultural pasts.

Breath, eyes, and memory are, to Sophie and the women in her family and her community, one “place”—a place from which the past must be dragged onward through life. Breath represents vitality, eyes represent witnessing, and memory represents the duty of carrying the past forward into the future. Sophie knows that the temptation to answer “Yes” to the common Haitian question, “Ou libere,” or “Are you free,” is strong within her—but at the same time, she knows that to truly liberate herself from the burdens of her past, her family, and her people’s stories would be to discard and discount them. By the end of the novel, in spite of all the painful stories from the past she has had to remember and carry with her, Sophie realizes that doing so is a kind of gift. “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?” As Sophie mourns her mother, Granmè Ifé speaks to her this sentence, which is in many ways like a story or riddle in and of itself. Sophie’s grandmother is trying to remind her that even in the midst of great pain, the stories and memories of one’s mothers, elders, and ancestors must be remembered.

In a final moment of pain and revelation towards the end of the novel, Sophie at last understands that the women in her life, particularly those in her family, are just like the women in the stories she grew up hearing. Sophie is like her mother, and her mother is like the women in the folktales—therefore, she sees that stories, the past, and cultural memory are all connected to the present as living, breathing things. Sophie is ultimately able to free herself from much of the pain with which her mother left her—but she also realizes that being liberated doesn’t mean forgetting who she is, where she comes from, or the stories and legacies of her culture.

Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Get the entire Breath, Eyes, Memory LitChart as a printable PDF.
Breath, Eyes, Memory PDF

Memory, Storytelling, and the Past Quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory

Below you will find the important quotes in Breath, Eyes, Memory related to the theme of Memory, Storytelling, and the Past.
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:
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 26 Quotes

“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 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: