The Dew Breaker

by

Edwidge Danticat

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Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Victims vs. Perpetrators Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Dew Breaker, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon

Although some of The Dew Breaker is set in Haiti and some takes place during the Duvalier regime (1957-1986), most of the stories in the book are set in the U.S. after the regime has ended. In this sense, the book explores how members of the Haitian diaspora remain connected to one another and are haunted by the terrible past of the Duvalier years. Indeed, interconnection is shown to be both a positive and negative force in the novel. On one hand, it allows the characters to create diasporic communities and remain connected to Haiti even once they move to the U.S. Yet at the same time, it also highlights the inescapability of the past. Perhaps the one thing that unites all the characters is their inability to leave Haiti behind, no matter how much they try to reinvent themselves or how far they go to escape.

The primary way in which the book explores the theme of diaspora and the sense of shared pain associated with being part of a displaced community is through its structure and form. As a book of linked narratives connected by one broad arc (the story of Papa and Ka), The Dew Breaker is both a novel and a set of short stories. In some stories, it is obvious how the characters, setting, and plot relate to other parts of the book, whereas in others it is less clear. Each story has a different narrator, and each is set in a different time period, such that reading the book involves moving non-chronologically through history.

The effect of this stylistic choice is to show how seemingly disparate people and narratives are far more interwoven than they might at first appear. Indeed, in several places the connection between characters is only revealed toward the end of the book, or is so subtle that the reader could almost miss it. For example, the first hint given that the preacher Papa killed was Anne’s brother lies in the fact that, like Anne, the preacher had a brother who drowned when he was three years old. This does not yet provide incontrovertible proof that the preacher and Anne are related, only establishes a hint that they might be. In a sense, the book is like a puzzle in which the full story is revealed through many disparate strands.

As a puzzle made of seemingly disconnected parts, then, the structure of the novel serves as a metaphor for diaspora. Many of the characters come to the U.S. alone, some of them hoping to get away from everything they left behind in Haiti. Yet they find themselves drawn back together, either by accident or on purpose. Much of the novel is set in the parts of Brooklyn in which Haitian immigrants are most concentrated, namely Flatbush, East Flatbush, and Crown Heights, and especially Nostrand Avenue. This part of Brooklyn becomes a Haitian community all of its own—one haunted by the same connections that existed back in Haiti itself.

The haunting and interconnection that take place via diasporic community is best illustrated by the character of Dany, the son of parents whom Papa killed. Following his parents’ deaths, Dany did not want to leave Haiti, but his aunt Estina encouraged him to do so in order to get away from the people who murdered his parents. Ironically, Dany ends up becoming the tenant of Papa—the exact person who murdered his parents. Through the interconnection of diaspora, home cannot be escaped, but is rather a constant, haunting presence.

Dany’s story echoes that of Beatrice, the wedding dressmaker who is convinced that the prison guard who tortured her back in Haiti (who could be Papa) is constantly following her around, always moving to the same neighborhood as her. It is unclear whether Beatrice’s fears are based in reality or are just paranoia, but in a way it doesn’t matter. Beatrice is so haunted by the man and memories that she hoped to leave behind that they put her life on a standstill, compelling her to give up dressmaking as she believes this is the only way she will be able to truly “disappear” and the lose the man for good.

Yet while many of the characters desperately try to escape the haunting and interconnection that characterize life in the diaspora, others crave it. This idea is explored through Claude, the young man who was born in Haiti, moved to the U.S. as a child, and then moved back to Haiti after killing his father. When Dany meets Claude, Claude is still struggling to fit in back in Haiti, partly because he doesn’t speak Creole. He admits to Dany: “I wish I’d stayed in touch more with my people, you know, then it wouldn’t be so weird showing up here like I did.” His words imply that maintaining a connection to home is important, particularly because one might need it. Claude elaborates on how this is true by explaining that even though he barely knew his family members in Haiti, they took him in despite “what I did” (killing his father). While Claude is haunted by the terrible act of violence he committed, he also relies on the connection to his family and home in his hour of need.

Overall, the book shows that the interconnection of different people through the diaspora can be both comforting and terrifying, painful and necessary. Haitians living in the diaspora may indeed feel haunted by an inescapable past and connection to their country, but this is never purely a bad thing. It can in fact be a vital lifeline in a difficult, brutal, and hostile world.

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Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting appears in each part of The Dew Breaker. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Quotes in The Dew Breaker

Below you will find the important quotes in The Dew Breaker related to the theme of Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting.
The Book of the Dead Quotes

I was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and have never even been to my parents' birthplace. Still, I answer “Haiti” because it is one more thing I've always longed to have in common with my parents.

Related Characters: Ka Bienaimé (speaker), Papa , Anne Bienaimé/Landlady
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:
Water Child Quotes

This was what they’d sacrificed everything for. But she always knew that she would repay them. And she had, with half her salary every month, and sometimes more. In return, what she got was the chance to parent them rather than have them parent her. Calling them, however, on the rare occasions that she actually called rather than received their calls, always made her wish to be the one guarded, rather than the guardian, to be reassured now and then that some wounds could heal, that some decisions would not haunt her forever.

Related Characters: Nadine Osnac, Nadine’s Father, Nadine’s Mother
Page Number: 63
Explanation and Analysis:
The Book of Miracles Quotes

Anne had closed her eyes without realizing it. Her daughter knew she reacted strongly to cemeteries, but Anne bad never told her why, since her daughter had already concluded early in life that this, like many unexplained aspects of her parents’ life, was connected to “some event that happened in Haiti.”

Related Characters: Ka Bienaimé, Papa , Anne Bienaimé/Landlady
Page Number: 72
Explanation and Analysis:

Besides, soon after her husband had opened his barbershop, he’d discovered that since he'd lost eighty pounds, changed his name, and given as his place of birth a village deep in the mountains of Leogane, no one asked about him anymore, thinking he was just a peasant who'd made good in New York. He hadn't been a famous “dew breaker,” or torturer, anyway, just one of hundreds who had done their jobs so well that their victims were never able to speak of them again.

Related Characters: Papa , Anne Bienaimé/Landlady
Page Number: 76-77
Explanation and Analysis:

What if it were Constant? What would she do? Would she spit in his face or embrace him, acknowledging a kinship of shame and guilt that she'd inherited by marrying her husband? How would she even know whether Constant felt any guilt or shame? What if he'd come to this Mass to flaunt his freedom? To taunt those who'd been affected by his crimes? What if he didn't even see it that way? What if he considered himself innocent? Innocent enough to go anywhere he pleased? What right did she have to judge him? As a devout Catholic and the wife of a man like her husband, she didn't have the same freedom to condemn as her daughter did.

Related Characters: Ka Bienaimé, Papa , Anne Bienaimé/Landlady, Emmanuel Constant
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Monkey Tails: February 7, 1986 / February 7, 2004 Quotes

I was twelve years old and, according to my mother, three months before my birth I had lost my father to something my mother would only vaguely describe as “political,” making me part of a generation of mostly fatherless boys, though some of our fathers were still living, even if somewhere else—in the provinces in another country, or across the ally not acknowledging us. A great many of our fathers had also died in the dictatorship’s prisons, and others had abandoned us altogether to serve the regime.

Related Characters: Michel (speaker), Michel’s Mother, Monsieur Christophe
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
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.

Related Characters: Freda (speaker)
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:
The Dew Breaker (Circa 1967) Quotes

But he could never shake from his thoughts the notion that his wife’s death had been his fault, that she’d been killed to punish him for the things he said on his radio program or from the pulpit of his church.

Related Characters: The Preacher
Page Number: 207
Explanation and Analysis:

Léon, the shoeshine man, wiped a tear from his eye, remembering his own son who was one of those men who roamed the night in denim uniforms and carried people away to their deaths. His son might have been one of those he’d emptied the slop jars on and who had shot in his direction in return, for a good Volunteer, it was said, should be able to kill his mother and father for the regime.

Even though Léon hated what his son did, he still had to let his boy come home now and then for the boy’s mother's sake and still had to acknowledge that maybe it was because of his boy that he'd not yet been arrested.

Related Characters: Léon
Page Number: 208-209
Explanation and Analysis:

And yet he had not been completely defeated. The wound on the fat man’s face wasn’t what he had hoped, he hadn’t blinded him or removed some of his teeth, but at least he’d left a mark on him, a brand that he would carry the rest of his life. Every time he looked in the mirror, he would have to confront this mark and remember him. Whenever people asked what happened to his face, he would have to tell a lie, a lie that would further remind him of the truth.

Related Characters: Papa , The Preacher
Related Symbols: Papa’s Scar
Page Number: 227-228
Explanation and Analysis: