The Dew Breaker: Seven Summary & Analysis

It has been seven years since the man last saw his wife. He marks the passing of time in sevens; he is now 37 years old, and it is seven hours until his wife will land at JFK airport, unless her flight from Port-au-Prince is delayed or cancelled. The man shares an apartment with two other men, Michel and Dany. His landlady has said she has no problem with his wife coming as long as she is “clean.” She asked if his wife would be uncomfortable living with two other men, and although he wants to tell her this is none of her business, instead he gives a polite, deferential reply. Walking away, he feels annoyed with himself.

After speaking to the landlady, the man goes to talk to Michel and Dany, indicating that he wants to make sure his wife feels comfortable. Michel plans to buy robes for him and Dany to wear out of politeness. He is the youngest, and has told the man to decorate the room a little with silk roses and vanilla incense. The three of them used to go out together, sometimes to a club that used to be called the Rendez Vous and was now named Cenegal. They stopped going after a Haitian man named Abner Louima was arrested there and beaten and raped by the police. The man tells Dany not to mention their nights out.

The man works two jobs; he is a night janitor at Medgar Evers College and a day janitor at King’s County Hospital. He has had occasional one-night stands with women, but they “never meant much to him.” Michel is now a lay minster at a Baptist church. While waiting for his wife at JFK, the man finally feels excited. He searches the crowd for women that look like the latest photos of his wife, which he has framed and hung on his bedroom walls.

The customs officials search the woman’s suitcase. She had been advised to gift-wrap everything so it wouldn’t be opened by customs, but now the official is ripping up all the paper while aggressively questioning her in bad Creole. He unwraps all the gifts she has brought for her husband, including mangoes, avocados, sugarcane, candy, and coffee beans. He throws everything away apart from a packet of chicken feathers which the man likes to twirl in his ear. Having briefly scrutinized these, he throws them away, as well. The woman walks away with her suitcase practically empty. It is only when her husband embraces her that she feels she has truly arrived in another country. 

Driving them home, the man speeds, almost crashing the car. His wife updates him on the wellbeing of their family and friends. She has gained weight during their time apart, and he can tell that she has had her hair done by a hairdresser. He cannot wait to be alone with her at home. He thinks about their honeymoon, a single night they spent at a hotel in Haiti. He moved to New York the next day, totally unaware that it would be seven years before they were reunited. It had ended up taking that long for him to get a green card. Now, at home, he points to the photographs of her he has hung on the wall and promises her: “I never forgot you for an instant.”  

The man has bought a range of fruit juices for his wife, but she tells him she just wants water. He thinks it’s a shame that the Creole word for love, remnen, is the same as “like,” which means that he has to invent ways to emphasize how much he loves her. When they have sex, he notices that she is more confident than she was on their honeymoon. On her way to the bathroom, she passes two men wearing matching pink satin robes.

Before the man leaves for work the next day, he gives his wife a set of keys and shows her how to work the stove and radio. The night before, after laughing at Michel and Dany’s robes, they had sex seven more times (according to the man; she counted fewer). He didn’t want to leave her, but his boss wouldn’t allow him to take the day off. They will have to use the weekends for having fun and looking for an apartment together. He calls her at midday, asking what she is doing. Lying, she tells him that she is cooking, and assures him that she is not bored.

The woman turns on the radio to the Creole-language station her husband showed her. The callers are furiously discussing a Haitian American man named Patrick Dorismond who was killed by police in Manhattan. The man comes home to find that his wife has made a large dinner for the two of them, plus Michel and Dany. This makes the men happy, as if they are “part of a family” for the first time in years. They talk enthusiastically during the meal, and afterwards they volunteer to do the dishes.

Once they are alone again, the man tells his wife that he works two jobs in part to distract himself from missing her, but also because he wanted to support both of them and save up to buy a house. The woman says she wants to work and that she completed a secretarial course in Haiti. However, her husband notes that until she learns English, she will only be able to find work in a Haitian restaurant or clothing factory. He falls asleep and his wife wakes him up at 9pm, when he is already supposed to be at work. His manager reprimands him for being late.

The woman spends the rest of the week inside the apartment, worried about getting lost if she goes outside. She hears more news about Dorismond’s death on the radio. It attracts lots of attention because Dorismond is the son of a famous singer. The woman chants “No justice, no peace” while she cooks. She writes letters to friends, family, and acquaintances back in Haiti. She also writes to her neighbor from Haiti, a man who came to check on her after her husband left and she locked herself inside the house. She fell into his arms and he cared for her, putting a cold compress on her head and giving her water to drink.

The woman wants to tell her husband about the neighbor and the long affair they had, knowing that telling him is necessary for making their future together feel “true.” She and her husband met during carnival in Jacmel. During the finale each year, the day before Ash Wednesday, a crowd burns their carnival outfits, pretending to cry. The woman had been one of the “official weepers,” and had given an enthusiastic, convincing performance. The man felt that the intensity of her fake grief indicated that she would be a passionate lover. However, later she told him that she didn’t actually fake her tears, but rather made herself think about all the people who had hurt her.

One day, the man comes home from work and finds his wife sitting on his bed, staring at the pictures of herself on his wall. She doesn’t respond when he kisses her, so he lays down next to her silently, not wanting to disturb her but wanting to “extinguish the carnivals burning in her head.” On Saturday, the woman rises early and eagerly waits for her husband to wake up. She tells him she wants to walk around outside and eat something in the sun. They pass the landlady on the way out and the woman greets her politely before moving on.

The couple get on a bus with no particular destination in mind. They get off at Prospect Park and walk around. The woman never expected somewhere like that to exist in New York. The man notices that at 5:11 P.M. his wife takes his hand, and when they leave the park two hours later she is still holding it. He thinks about his favorite moment in the carnival back in Jacmel, when a man and a woman in wedding outfits ask attendees if they would marry them. They keep asking and asking, but those who look closely can see that the “man” is actually a woman dressed as a man, and vice versa.

On the bus home the man sits across from his wife so he can look at her. She is thinking about the carnival as well, and how when they had participated in the bride and groom tradition, they had dressed as the appropriate gender, “forgoing the traditional puzzle.” They could do the tradition in New York, but since the woman doesn’t know English, it would have to be silent. The silence between them now seems permanent.