The Dew Breaker

by

Edwidge Danticat

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The Dew Breaker: Water Child Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
On the first day of every month, Nadine Osnac gets a letter from her mother asking her to call her parents. This month the letter updates her on her father’s “unreliable” health and stresses how much they long to hear their daughter’s voice. Three weeks later, Nadine still hasn’t called, although she reads the letter every day while eating lunch in the hospital cafeteria. In re-reading it over and over, she hopes to find a note of “sympathy,” but she cannot. Her colleague Josette comes over and greets her warmly.
Nadine’s parents appear to be extending a gesture of love toward her, but her reaction indicates that it is not the way she wants to be loved. She is clearly in some way troubled or even tormented by the gesture, which is why she repeatedly reads the letter without responding.
Themes
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
Josette tells Nadine that Ms. Hinds is back from the ICU, and is so distressed that she had to be sedated. Both women work in the Ear, Nose, and Throat ward, and often encounter patients who wake up from surgery horrified by the fact that they can’t speak. Like Nadine, Josette is Haitian. She came to the US as an infant. Nadine lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Canarsie, where she keeps the TV on all day because she likes having “voices in […] her life that required neither reaction nor response.” She has given up on other activities that require a substantial amount of social interaction. 
Nadine is clearly very lonely, which—as Danticat has already illustrated—can be a common part of the immigration experience. Compared to Nadine, Josette is cheerful and friendly. Perhaps she feels more at home in the US because she immigrated when she was very young. Meanwhile, Nadine’s loneliness and isolation encourages her to shun social interaction. 
Themes
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
Nadine has a voicemail from her ex-boyfriend Eric, the father of her “nearly born child.” He speaks English with a strong Haitian accent, and says only a few words of greeting before hanging up. He has been calling her every month since they broke up; every time she removes the voicemail tape and puts it on an altar she has erected to their unborn child. She now has seven tapes, but has never called him back. Tonight, she almost calls her parents, dialing most of the digits of their phone number before hanging up and bursting into tears.  
Here a possible reason for Nadine’s self-imposed isolation and torment appears. She seems to have recently experienced a miscarriage or abortion, and in addition to memorializing the life of her unborn child, she is also mourning the end of her relationship with its father. Note that the shrine is yet another example of a grieving ritual.
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
A week later Nadine gets another letter from her parents. This one is “meticulously typed.” In it, her mother thanks her for sending extra money, and tells her that her father has been to see a doctor about his inflamed prostate. She says that every Sunday they wait for Nadine’s phone call, hoping that she will return to their “beautiful routine.” The next day Nadine reads this letter at lunch, unable to eat. The other nurses have long known to leave her alone, but Josette invites her to join them for a trip into the city after work. Nadine declines and leaves the cafeteria.
Nadine seems to be concerned about her father, but this concern does not allow her to overcome her resistance to reaching out and speaking to him and her mother. Indeed, she seems to be existing in a state of paralysis, trapped between grief for her child and relationship and the torment of disconnection with her parents and other people.
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
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Ms. Hinds, a 25-year-old patient, has been throwing things in her room. Nadine arrives to find her being held down by several nurses, including Josette. Ms. Hinds’ body is completely hairless and her arms are covered in IV marks. Nadine tells the other nurses to let go of her, saying: “Let me be alone with her.” They leave, and Nadine asks if Ms. Hinds wants anything. Ms. Hinds can’t speak, so Nadine gets her a notepad and pen. Nadine struggles to read Ms. Hinds’ handwriting, but manages to see that she has written that she can’t speak. Ms. Hinds adds that she is a teacher, and then writes: “WHY SEND ME HOME LIKE THIS?”
This passage provides an important point of connection with the other stories in the book so far. Many of them have been preoccupied with the question of the inability to speak, whether in a metaphorical or (here) literal sense. Papa and Anne forbid themselves from speaking about their past, the unnamed husband and wife struggle to communicate with each other, Nadine won’t speak to her parents, and Ms. Hinds has been surgically rendered mute.  
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon
Nadine explains that Ms. Hinds will now get an artificial larynx and work with a speech therapist to help her speak again. Ms. Hinds writes that she feels like a basenji, a breed of dog that doesn’t bark. At home that night, Nadine calls Eric, who is probably at home resting before going to his second job as a night janitor at Medgar Evers College. She panics as she thinks of something to say to him, but then hears through the phone that his number no longer works. She dials again and the same thing happens.
Perhaps by witnessing Ms. Hinds’ frustration at being physically unable to communicate, Nadine gains insight or courage into her own situation, finally allowing her to call Eric. Yet she then discovers that she, like Ms. Hinds, is physically hindered from speaking to him, too. It is heavily hinted here that Eric is the unnamed man from the previous story.
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon
Ten years before, Nadine’s parents sold their house and moved to the edge of a slum in Port-au-Prince so that they could pay for Nadine’s nursing school. Now she sends them half of her salary every month. She is happy to financially support them in this way, but craves their emotional protection. She finally calls her parents. Her mother answers the phone and says that Nadine sounds sad. She promises that she and Nadine’s father will come to visit as soon as his health improves. On the phone they always discuss practical matters, never anything painful. Nadine’s mother asks if she has a boyfriend, urging her to find someone so she doesn’t end up “old and alone.” Nadine ends the call quickly.
Nadine and her parents have established a relationship that is, from a practical standpoint, beneficial to both of them, but the same is not true of their emotional connection. Nadine’s mother does appear to sincerely love her, but she doesn’t understand how her daughter wants to be loved. This puts a strain on their relationship, alienating them from one another.
Themes
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Diaspora, Interconnection, and Haunting Theme Icon
Quotes
The next day, Ms. Hinds, while waiting for her parents to pick her up from the hospital, changes into a dress that her mother bought her. Nadine wants to warn Ms. Hinds that the horror of having lost her voice will only intensify, but she says nothing as she knows that Ms. Hinds will soon learn this herself. Later, during Nadine’s lunch hour, Josette comes to get her to say that Ms. Hinds wants to say goodbye. Reluctantly Nadine goes to Ms. Hinds’ room, where she meets her parents, who both seem overcome with worry. Ms. Hinds’ father thanks Nadine and asks her to pass on their gratitude to the other nurses and doctors.
Ms. Hinds’ parents treat her in a similar way to the (unwelcome) treatment Nadine receives from her parents. In both cases, an abundance of worry prohibits the parents from being a strong, reliable source of emotional support. In a sense, this illuminates how worry can be paradoxically selfish, even though it is an emotion that comes out of empathy.
Themes
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon
Ms. Hinds’s parents push her out in the wheelchair, and Nadine is left alone. She thinks about the fetus she aborted, which, if she’d carried it to term, might have been born that day. Then she thinks about her parents and Eric, and then of her own reflection in the elevator doors, which she considers “unrecognizable.”
Nadine is so alienated from everyone around her—including her colleagues, her ex-boyfriend, and her family—that she has become alienated from herself. This is why she cannot recognize herself.
Themes
Grief, Memory, and Erasure Theme Icon
Love, Hope, and Redemption Theme Icon
Violence vs. Care Theme Icon