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Mariselle
Freda is a young Haitian immigrant who befriends Rézia and Mariselle in her GED class. Back in Haiti, Freda was a funeral singer, an occupation she began after singing at her own father’s funeral. Freda feels great sadness over her father’s death and the political situation in Haiti, but she finds optimism via her new friends in New York.
Freda Quotes in The Dew Breaker
The The Dew Breaker quotes below are all either spoken by Freda or refer to Freda. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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The Funeral Singer Quotes
My mother used to say that we'll all have three deaths: the one when our breath leaves our bodies to rejoin the air, the one when we are put back in the earth, and the one that will erase us completely and no one will remember us at all.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Freda Character Timeline in The Dew Breaker
The timeline below shows where the character Freda appears in The Dew Breaker. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Funeral Singer
...in a classroom, reading aloud from a manual. Mariselle gets up and states her name. Freda wishes she could sing to introduce herself. Given the chance, she would sing “Brother Timonie,”...
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Rézia nicknames the teacher “Flat Tit,” Mariselle “Mother Mary,” and Freda “the baby funeral singer,” because Freda used to be “one of the few professional funeral...
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At the restaurant, the women drink wine or rum. Freda was the first to tell the others about her life, saying that she was once...
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After several weeks on the course, Freda, Mariselle, and Rézia cook a meal together, each taking care of a different dish. Mariselle...
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...her practice test. Later, they get drunk and stay late at the restaurant. Marisella asks Freda how someone becomes a funeral singer, and Freda explains that her first public performance was...
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...Greek billionaire, was friends with Baby Doc. Mariselle’s husband painted a portrait of her. When Freda was a little girl, she would crowd the pages of her notebook with tiny figures....
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Freda is not particularly religious, but she agrees to light candles and pray to Saint Jude,...
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...Mariselle has gotten a job at a gallery, and will sell her husband’s paintings there. Freda announces that she’s going back to Haiti to join a militia, and the others burst...
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