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Chapter 40
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
Amabelle walks down to the Massacre River and sees an unclean man in three layers of clothing; he claims he is “walking towards the dawn,” and kisses her. When he leaves, she finds a boy by the river and asks to be taken over the border into the Dominican Republic. She is told to go tonight, as she does not have papers.
Amabelle is finally capable of confronting the Massacre River, the scene of many traumatic experiences in her life. By walking to the river, she comes to accept it as a part of her personal history and a part of her country. Having accepted that Haiti and the river are important forces in shaping her identity, she is finally comfortable returning to the Dominican Republic on her own terms.
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Amabelle returns at night, and meets a man who takes her across the border. She sleeps as she passes through the military checkpoints, and thinks to herself that sleep has been a comforting routine for her. She adds that sleeping is the closest thing to disappearing. She wakes up the next morning, and the man drops her off in Alégria, which he calls her “joyful land.”
Amabelle realizes that she lost part of her life to dreams, which have long been a source of comforting monotony to her. In this way, dreams were a sort of “death” for her. Although she survived the massacre—escaping death in a literal sense— she disappeared from the world due to grief and fear. This disappearance has been a sort of demise: it kept her from truly living her life or enjoying her existence.
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Amabelle notes that Alégria now looks like a “closed town,” where the houses have defenses that make them seem like fortresses. Amabelle does not recognize much of what she sees, and feels as if she has never been in the town before. Eventually, she gets lost; she believes the cane fields have disappeared, and is too scared to ask for directions.
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Amabelle shows up at many houses before finding one that looks similar to Señora Valencia’s new living quarters. She eventually meets a young girl and boy, and speaks to them in Spanish; she is surprised that she can still speak it clearly. She meets a woman who speaks Spanish with a Haitian Creole accent, and tells her that she wants to see the señora.
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The handmaid escorts Amabelle inside, where she looks at a parlor filled with photographs of the family. Señor Pico’s photos show a growing number of medals and honors; Rosalinda’s photos show her married off to a man in a uniform that looks like her father’s. The biggest portrait depicts a baby boy in baptismal garb.
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She is finally introduced to Señora Valencia, who does not recognize her; the señora chastises Amabelle for using her old worker’s name. When her old employer does not recognize her, Amabelle begins to feel like Alégria never existed. She wonders how the señora cannot recognize her voice, and begins to list details from their history together. The señora does not believe her, and asks her to recount how Amabelle was found many years ago.
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Amabelle describes being found by the river’s edge, and the señora finally believes her. She gestures at Amabelle to sit down, and Amabelle looks at the señora’s hands, which are unscarred and pristine. Amabelle wonders to herself why she never dreamed of Señora Valencia, and considers whether she ever loved her employer.
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Señora Valencia explains how her family moved to a new house: Señor Pico bought it from the family of a colonel. She tells Amabelle how most of her acquaintances, such as Doña Eva and Beatriz, are in New York now. She says that when she moved into the new home, Luis and Juana went back to “their people.”
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Señora Valencia then tells Amabelle that if she condemns her country, she must condemn herself; she claims that she would have had to leave the country if she betrayed her husband. She admits that she never asked him any questions about his actions. She then says that during the massacre, she hid many of Amabelle’s people; she confesses that she hid these strangers because she could not hide Amabelle herself.
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Señora Valencia tells Amabelle that her husband was merely following the orders he was given. She then marvels that they are both alive and awaiting a natural death. Amabelle thinks to herself that she and the señora were caught between being friends or strangers; now, however, they act like two passersby on the street.
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Amabelle asks Señora Valencia about a stream and waterfall she remembers from her time in Alégria, and the señora agrees to show her the closest waterfall she knows. The señora drives Amabelle and Sylvie, her housemaid, to a waterfall nearby; when they arrive, the señora comments that Amabelle was always “drawn to water” in her youth. The señora says that she would search for Amabelle near rivers and streams after Amabelle left for Haiti.
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Sylvie, the housemaid, interrupts their conversation to ask the señora why the Dominican soldiers used the word for “parsley” to target Haitians. The señora replies that when Trujillo was a guard working in the cane fields, one of the Haitian workers escaped. Trujillo chased him, but could not find him. He asked the worker to announce his location; if he did, Trujillo would spare him. The worker obeyed, but also kept running; he would, however, shout out the names of the field’s crops as he passed through them. Trujillo realized that Haitians “can never hide as long as there is parsley nearby.” The señora adds that one’s language can reveal “who belongs on what side.”
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Amabelle and Señora Valencia say goodbye, and Amabelle tells the señora to go in peace. Amabelle is picked up by her driver, and she asks him what he does for a living; he tells her that he helps bring workers into the Dominican Republic to help with the sugarcane. She asks him if he knows of the massacre, and he says his mother escaped from it when he was a child, and that his father died in it. Amabelle tells him to leave her by the river, and insists on waiting alone.
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Amabelle walks down to the river, which looks nearly invisible in the darkness. With the river nearly undetectable, she thinks to herself that she can pretend, momentarily, that the river’s victimsher mother and father, and Odettedied natural deaths. She admits that she used to visit the river in hopes that it would reveal what her parents wanted for her after their deaths.
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Amabelle sees the man who kissed her back in Haiti stepping out of the river, and wants to ask him to lower her into the river, or into Sebastien’s arms, or into her father’s laughter. Instead, she takes off her clothes, gets into the river, and floats in its current. She admits that she “looked to [her] dreams” for relief and calmness, and to escape the image of blood in the river. She realizes that she, like the man, is “looking for the dawn.”
