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Chapter 30
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Farming of Bones, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Power of Memory
Dreams vs. Reality
Language and Identity
Death, Grief, and Hope
Home, Family, and Belonging
Summary
Analysis
Yves and Amabelle are placed in a truck and driven into Haiti. They travel through the Cap, a city that has survived multiple demolitions. Amabelle recounts how King Henry I had declared that he would not surrender the Cap until it was burnt down, and then set his own house on fire to prove it. As a result, the Cap’s current houses are less grand than their predecessors.
The stories of King Henry I’s determination and self-destructiveness reveal the consequences of national pride. King Henry was so proud of his home—a symbol of his Haitian heritage—that he was unwilling to forfeit the home to others. Instead he destroyed it, leaving smaller houses to be rebuilt. The smaller houses that remain in Haiti thereby provide a warning: maintaining one’s cultural pride above all else can result in future generations’ decline.
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Amabelle looks up and sees the citadel of Henry I “leaning down towards the city,” and wonders if Yves notices such things. As she and Yves travel through the crowd, people and merchants notice and recognize them as the “nearly dead.” Amabelle believes that Yves is looking for “a place to enter,” but that he is acting as if he is lost.
Amabelle thinks about the citadel fondly, believing it almost bends towards the city in an embrace. Yves, on the other hand, seems lost and confused. Both characters’ actions represent their respective viewpoints on belonging. Amabelle feels supported and welcomed by Haiti, while Yves does not yet consider Haiti his true home.
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One man recognizes Yves, and they talk about what has occurred in Haiti since Yves’s departure. Yves and Amabelle then arrive at Yves’s mother’s house. Yves sees his mother struggling with her blouse, and helps her put it on; the two tearfully hug. Yves then introduces his mother, Man Rapadou, to Amabelle; Man Rapadou asks if she is Yves’s woman. Amabelle is unsure how to respond, but Man Rapadou hugs her as well. When Yves tells his mother her name, Amabelle feels “welcomed.”
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Amabelle, Yves, and Man Rapadou enter the house, and Amabelle notes how it reminds her of “the compound at Don Carlos’s mill.” Yves greets his family, and Man Rapadou serves everyone coffee; Amabelle drinks it quickly, saying that it replaces the taste of parsley and blood.
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Man Rapadou tells stories of Yves in his childhood, and Yves listens as if it is the first time he has heard the stories. Man Rapadou then tells everyone to remember the story of Yves’s father. She recounts how he died in the midst of a feast after he was let out of prison. Yves pushes his food away after hearing the story, causing his mother to laugh.
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Amabelle claims that Man Rapadou is the only one who seems able to turn sadness into humor. Man Rapadou reminds her of the old women who were injured in the cane fields; their wounds healed eventually, but their skin never returned to the way it was before.
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Amabelle then remembers a lesson her father taught her. In her youth, when her father would be attending to births and deaths, he explained to her how sadness is not a gentle or light emotion. Rather, sadness always has an impact; sometimes, that impact is visible to other people, but sometimes it is hidden and known only by its sufferer.
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Amabelle is still too injured to eat, and Man Rapadou notices her plate of untouched food. She then walks over to Amabelle and asks if she would like some soup. As Yves’s family watches, Man Rapadou feeds Amabelle like a “sick, bedridden child.”
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