The Farming of Bones

by

Edwidge Danticat

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Farming of Bones makes teaching easy.

Sebastien Onius Character Analysis

Sebastien Onius, a migrant worker from Haiti, is Amabelle Désir’s lover. Sebastien, like Amabelle, lost a parent to a natural disaster: his father was killed in a hurricane, which prompted him to leave Haiti for new opportunities in the Dominican Republic. Sebastien is more jaded and nationalistic than Amabelle; he does not trust the Dominican government, and is consumed by memories of the country he left behind. Sebastien often asks Amabelle to recall details of her childhood in Haiti, as a means of preserving her memories and reaffirming her cultural heritage. Moreover, Sebastien is content to live in fantasies, and even asks Amabelle to reimagine her circumstances in order to have happier dreams and rid herself of grief. Sebastien and Amabelle’s happiness is eventually interrupted by the rising tensions between Dominicans and Haitians; Sebastien and his sister Mimi are captured and murdered by soldiers, leaving Amabelle to grieve over their loss. Sebastien’s death eventually prompts Amabelle to cherish her life in Haiti. Although she is initially unappreciative of her daily routine, she is soon grateful for her survival, and begins to move past her dreams of a life with him. Sebastien is ultimately kept alive in Amabelle’s memory, although his actual life is cut short; through recollection and storytelling, Amabelle preserves his legacy, and keeps him from being forgotten.

Sebastien Onius Quotes in The Farming of Bones

The The Farming of Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Sebastien Onius or refer to Sebastien Onius. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Power of Memory Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

“She didn’t show a lot of affection to me. I think she believed this was not a good way to raise a girl, who might not have affection the rest of her life. She also didn’t smile often.” […] “Her name was Irelle Pradelle,” I say, “and after she died, when I dreamt of her, she was always smiling. Except of course when she and my papa were drowning.”

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius, Irelle Pradelle
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“[A] boy carrying his dead father from the road, wobbling, swaying, stumbling under the weight. The boy with the wind in his ears and pieces of the tin roofs that opened the father’s throat blowing around him. The boy trying not to drop the father, not crying or screaming like you’d think, but praying that more of the father’s blood will stay in the father’s throat and not go into the muddy flood, going no one knows where.”

Related Characters: Sebastien Onius (speaker), Amabelle Désir
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“Give yourself a pleasant dream. Remember not only the end, but the middle, and the beginning, the things they did when they were breathing. Let us say that the river was still that day.”

“And my parents?”

“They died natural deaths many years later.”

“And why did I come here?”

“Even though you were a girl when you left and I was already a man when I arrived and our families did not know each other, you came here to meet me.”

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius (speaker), Antoine Désir, Irelle Pradelle
Related Symbols: The Massacre River
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

“Sometimes the people in the fields, when they’re tired and angry, they say we’re an orphaned people,” he said. “They say we are the burnt crud at the bottom of the pot. They say some people don’t belong anywhere and that’s us. I say we are a group of vwayajè, wayfarers. This is why you had to travel this far to meet me, because that is what we are.”

Related Characters: Sebastien Onius (speaker), Amabelle Désir
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“You never believed those people could injure you… Even after they killed Joël, you thought they could never harm you.”

[…] Perhaps I had trusted too much. I had been living inside dreams that would not go away, the memories of an orphaned child. When the present itself was truly frightful, I had perhaps purposely chosen not to see it.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius (speaker), Joël
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“You call me Man Rapadou,” she said. “I know your story.”

Which story of mine did she know? Which story was she told?

“Everything you knew before this slaughter is lost,” she said. Perhaps she was encouraging me to […] forsake Sebastien, even my memories of him, those images of him that would float through my head repeatedly, like brief glimpses of the same dream.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Man Rapadou (speaker), Sebastien Onius
Page Number: 225–226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“When you know you’re going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don’t even think you have bones when you’re young […] But when you’re old, they start reminding you they’re there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you’re walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? […] Leave me now,” she said. ”I’m going to dream up my children.”

Related Characters: Man Denise (speaker), Amabelle Désir, Sebastien Onius, Mimi
Page Number: 240–241
Explanation and Analysis:
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Sebastien Onius Quotes in The Farming of Bones

The The Farming of Bones quotes below are all either spoken by Sebastien Onius or refer to Sebastien Onius. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Power of Memory Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

“She didn’t show a lot of affection to me. I think she believed this was not a good way to raise a girl, who might not have affection the rest of her life. She also didn’t smile often.” […] “Her name was Irelle Pradelle,” I say, “and after she died, when I dreamt of her, she was always smiling. Except of course when she and my papa were drowning.”

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius, Irelle Pradelle
Page Number: 14
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“[A] boy carrying his dead father from the road, wobbling, swaying, stumbling under the weight. The boy with the wind in his ears and pieces of the tin roofs that opened the father’s throat blowing around him. The boy trying not to drop the father, not crying or screaming like you’d think, but praying that more of the father’s blood will stay in the father’s throat and not go into the muddy flood, going no one knows where.”

Related Characters: Sebastien Onius (speaker), Amabelle Désir
Page Number: 33
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“Give yourself a pleasant dream. Remember not only the end, but the middle, and the beginning, the things they did when they were breathing. Let us say that the river was still that day.”

“And my parents?”

“They died natural deaths many years later.”

“And why did I come here?”

“Even though you were a girl when you left and I was already a man when I arrived and our families did not know each other, you came here to meet me.”

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius (speaker), Antoine Désir, Irelle Pradelle
Related Symbols: The Massacre River
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

“Sometimes the people in the fields, when they’re tired and angry, they say we’re an orphaned people,” he said. “They say we are the burnt crud at the bottom of the pot. They say some people don’t belong anywhere and that’s us. I say we are a group of vwayajè, wayfarers. This is why you had to travel this far to meet me, because that is what we are.”

Related Characters: Sebastien Onius (speaker), Amabelle Désir
Page Number: 54
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 26 Quotes

“You never believed those people could injure you… Even after they killed Joël, you thought they could never harm you.”

[…] Perhaps I had trusted too much. I had been living inside dreams that would not go away, the memories of an orphaned child. When the present itself was truly frightful, I had perhaps purposely chosen not to see it.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Sebastien Onius (speaker), Joël
Page Number: 141
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

“You call me Man Rapadou,” she said. “I know your story.”

Which story of mine did she know? Which story was she told?

“Everything you knew before this slaughter is lost,” she said. Perhaps she was encouraging me to […] forsake Sebastien, even my memories of him, those images of him that would float through my head repeatedly, like brief glimpses of the same dream.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Man Rapadou (speaker), Sebastien Onius
Page Number: 225–226
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

“When you know you’re going to die, you try to be near the bones of your own people. You don’t even think you have bones when you’re young […] But when you’re old, they start reminding you they’re there. They start turning to dust on you, even as you’re walking here and there, going from place to place. And this is when you crave to be near the bones of your own people. My children never felt this. They had to look death in the face, even before they knew what it was. Just like you did, no? […] Leave me now,” she said. ”I’m going to dream up my children.”

Related Characters: Man Denise (speaker), Amabelle Désir, Sebastien Onius, Mimi
Page Number: 240–241
Explanation and Analysis: