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
Sebastien asks Amabelle what she most admires about her father. Amabelle describes her father, Antoine Désir, with fondness: she claims he was more “joyful” than her mother and always tried to joke around with her. She recalls his dedication to finding new cures, and the generous aid he provided to his neighbors; he would often help them “plow their fields and dig waterways.” She admits that she was “jealous” of the time he spent with the neighbors.
Amabelle’s memory of her dead father preserves his story from being lost to time. Instead of being forgotten, his character is being shared with a new person, whose memory will further keep his name from disappearing into history: Sebastien, like Amabelle, will recollect him fondly in the future. Still, death has taken Antoine from Amabelle, and in her grief, she attempts to recall his best qualities in order to honor his memory.
Themes
Amabelle then asks Sebastien how his father died, and Sebastien describes what happened in the hurricane: he “carried his dead father” after a “tin roof” had slashed his father’s throat. Sebastien emphasizes that he was not crying or screaming; rather, he prayed that his father’s blood would not disappear into the floodwaters, “going no one knows where.”
Sebastien remembers his father’s death in clear detail, a morbid counterexample to Amabelle’s fond recollection of her father’s life. This juxtaposition suggests that memory is an important archive of both the good and the bad. Furthermore, Sebastien did not cry, but instead worried about his father’s blood disappearing with no one to remember it. His fears demonstrate how memory is sometimes more powerful than grief. That is, Sebastien was more worried about his father’s life being forgotten than about the grief he was experiencing.
Themes
