Themes
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
Amabelle discusses how her dreams always involve her giving testimony to things or people, such as the justice of the peace, or Trujillo himself. She admits to herself that she knew that many people would die; she also claims that she can say “pesi” and “perejil,” the words for parsley in both Spanish and Haitian Creole. She discusses how dreams are used to cover people’s sight and protect them from “evil spells.”
Amabelle’s dreams eventually begin to mimic reality. Instead of dreaming about happier things, she dreams of sharing her grief with others. This more realistic dream indicates that she is slowly accepting the circumstances of her life and starting to confront her trauma. In fact, her dreams reinforce how important memory is to her: not only does she recall memories in reality, but she also relies on memory in dreams. Amabelle also emphasizes that she is bilingual, and thereby able to transverse Dominican and Haitian culture equally. This declaration of her bilingualism is a sign that she is coming to terms with her complicated identity and how it has changed over her lifetime.
Themes
Amabelle had believed that death would not find her. Only after she loses Mimi and Sebastien does she realize that a “river of blood” might visit her house. She remembers someone telling her that the dead pass down their words to the next generation through proverbs and sounds, and it is a type of inheritance.
Amabelle’s thoughts indicate that she is slowly accepting the presence of death in her life. Whereas before she would repress her fears by daydreaming, she now accepts that death is present in her own home, which seems to symbolize her life as a whole. She is able to accept this fact in part due to her realization that memory safeguards the dead’s legacy. Amabelle recognizes that memory keeps the dead alive for future generations, preserving their words and cultural identity. Amabelle has used memory this way throughout her life, but for the first time, she explicitly acknowledges the power of her recollection and how it can make the reality of death more bearable.
Themes
Amabelle believes that all she is able to pass along is the slaughter. She wants to put it down in a safe place, where it will not be scattered or be buried underground. Even if no one is around and it is a silent night, she still wishes to “lay it down.”
Amabelle continues to explicitly realize how her memory will contribute to history, and her recollections of the Parsley Massacre, though horrific, are also useful. She recognizes that these recollections must be kept safe from time, which can erase or bury them. She also admits that she wants to put her memories of the massacre away; in this admission, she begins to explicitly verbalize for the first time how memory has become a burden to her.
Themes
