The Dew Breaker is a book filled with violence, suffering, and death, but it is not without hope. For many of the characters, hope and redemption emerge from their relationships with others—particularly parent-child relationships, but also romantic partnerships, friendships, and even connections between strangers. Yet the book also interrogates the limits of the hope and redemption that can be found through such relationships. Although connection to others can provide comfort, solidarity, and a sense of possibility, it cannot negate violence and trauma.
For Papa and Anne, having Ka provides a profound sense of hope against the backdrop of the horrors they escaped (and, in Papa’s case, perpetrated) back in Haiti. They both mention the fact that her name, Ka, which means “good angel,” symbolizes the hope they have invested in her. Papa tells her, “When you born, look at your face, I think, here is my ka, my good angel.” Meanwhile, Anne emphasizes that she believes Papa has been redeemed from the violence he committed in Haiti by his connection to his family. She tells Ka, “You and me, we save him.” Later in the novel, it emerges that Anne and Papa were only able to discuss the fact that Papa killed the preacher (Anne’s brother) after Ka was born. Again, this emphasizes that the love Ka’s parents have for her has a transformative impact on her them, allowing them to honestly communicate about the past—the first step toward redemption.
Hope and redemption through parent-child relationships is also explored through the concept of sacrifice. In the story about Nadine, it is noted that Nadine’s parents made enormous sacrifices in order to send her to nursing school, including selling their house and moving to the edge of a slum in Port-au-Prince. Thanks to these sacrifices, Nadine is able to move to the U.S. and work as a nurse, which in turn allows her to send money back to her parents. She interprets this as “the chance to parent them rather than have them parent her.” This reversal of care and sacrifice is another way in which redemption can happen through parent-child relationships. Indeed, the particularly hopeful thing about this example is that sacrifice isn’t monodirectional. Nadine’s parents’ sacrifice allows her to have a more prosperous future, and she in turn makes sacrifices that improve her parents’ lives, as well.
It is not just the love between parents and children that provides hope and redemption, however. In the story about Freda, she and her girlfriends—who have been severely traumatized by the violence of the Duvalier regime and the new challenges of life in the US—find healing and comfort in their friendships with each other. Freda’s friend Mariselle remarks that Haiti “is not a lost cause yet […] because it made us.” Not only have the women each managed to escape the oppression of the dictatorship in order to make new lives in the U.S., but they have found love and solidarity with each other, and this provides a particularly strong foundation of redemption and hope.
Similarly, the solidarity that the preacher encounters in prison gives him hope even in what is perhaps the darkest moment of his life. He notices that the men in his prison cell are from all walks of life, that some of them have evidently been imprisoned for a long time, and that most of them likely have no hope of getting out. Yet despite this desperate situation, they band together and care for one another, and when it seems as if the preacher is being released, they are happy for him. The preacher’s connection to the other prisoners, however brief, reminds him of the goodness of the human spirit at a time when he is otherwise surrounded by ruthlessness and cruelty.
At the same time, The Dew Breaker also recognizes the limits of hope and redemption forged through love. When Baby Doc goes into exile, Michel is left wondering what will happen to all the people who participated in carrying out state violence. He thinks in particular of a character called Regulus, wondering if he will repent and ask for his children’s forgiveness, “both for what he’d done to them and for what he had done to the country.” Rather than seeking repentance, Regulus shoots himself.
The task facing Papa is very similar to that facing Regulus, and for a long time Papa likewise chooses to avoid confronting the reality of what he has done. Once his lies are exposed and Ka knows the truth about him, she struggles to deal with this. Papa may have found hope and redemption through his love for her, but she is not sure that she can feel the same way about him. Indeed, the book ends on an ambiguous note regarding Ka’s relationship to her father—a reminder that remaining hopeful and redeeming one’s mistakes are sometimes impossible, and that certain acts can permanently destroy a loving relationship.
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Love, Hope, and Redemption Quotes in The Dew Breaker
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.
My father has never liked having his picture taken. We have only a few of him at home, some awkward shots at my different school graduations, with him standing between my mother and me, his hand covering his scar. I had hoped to take some pictures of him on this trip, but he hadn't let me. At one of the rest stops I bought a disposable camera and pointed it at him anyway. As usual, he protested, covering his face with both hands like a little boy protecting his cheeks from a slap. He didn't want any more pictures taken of him for the rest of his life, he said, he was feeling too ugly.
I’d used a piece of mahogany that was naturally flawed, with a few superficial cracks along what was now the back. I’d thought these cracks beautiful and had made no effort to sand or polish them away, as they seemed like the wood's own scars, like the one my father had on his face. But I was also a little worried about the cracks. Would they seem amateurish and unintentional, like a mistake? Could the wood come apart with simple movements or with age? Would the client be satisfied?
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.
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.
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.
In spite of his huge muscles and oversized tattoos, Claude seemed oddly defenseless, like a refugee lost at sea, or a child looking for his parents in a supermarket aisle. Or maybe that’s just how Dany wanted to see him, to make him seem more normal, less frightening.
He’d wound you, then try to soothe you with words, then he’d wound you again. He thought he was God.
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.
He had been counting on a quick death, not one where he would disappear in stages of prolonged suffering interrupted by a few seconds of relief. He had never thought he’d have reason to hope that maybe his life might be spared. He hadn’t expected the kindness of his cellmates, men of different skin tones and social classes all thrown together in this living hell and helping one another survive it.
Maybe be shouldn’t have preached those “sermons to the beast,” as he liked to think of them. But someone needed to stir the flock out of their stupor, the comfort that religion allowed them, that it was okay to have wretched lives here on earth so long as Heaven was glowing ahead. Maybe his death would do just that, move his people to revolt, to demand justice for themselves while requesting it for him. Or maybe his death would have no relevance at all. He would simply join a long list of martyrs and his name would vanish from his countrymen's lips as soon as his body was placed in the ground.
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.
