In The Farming of Bones, various characters die as a result of violence or misfortune, and these tragedies illustrate how widespread and sudden death can be. The lives of those left behind are inexorably altered by the deaths they have experienced; in fact, these characters’ lives often lose meaning and happiness. As the novel unfolds, Danticat illustrates how death has two victims: it impacts the deceased, as well as those who remain. Despite the persistence of grief, however, these surviving characters gradually rebuild their lives. Ultimately, the novel demonstrates that death, despite its power, does not completely extinguish hope.
Various characters in the story experience the death of a loved one. These losses are traumatic and unexpected, demonstrating that death is a powerful and omnipresent force. Early on in the novel, Amabelle recalls the deaths of her parents in a flood. After a commonplace shopping trip, her parents had waded through a river just as a storm began, and were swallowed by the waves. Seeing this, Amabelle screamed until she could “taste blood,” and tried to “throw” herself “into the water.” In this way, a joyful family outing turns into a tragedy, demonstrating that death is ever-present. Furthermore, Amabelle’s chilling responseher willingness to follow her parents into deathshows the immediate impact that death has on its witnesses.
In Danticat’s novel, death is merciless towards everyone, regardless of class. For example, Señora Valencia’s newborn son, Rafael, passes away unexpectedly. Distraught, she says it is “too soon” for him to go; she is later consoled by another parent who has recently lost a child. The bereaved parent tells her that when his son died, “the ground sank” beneath his feet, and he learned that life is as “sudden as a few breaths.” A child’s death teaches painful lessons about how fleeting and unfair life can be; moreover, it illustrates how everyoneeven a new, happy parentis subject to the pain of loss.
Additionally, death’s impact can also manifest as guilt. When Amabelle accidentally drowns a fellow refugee, Odette, to keep her from drawing the attention of soldiers, she is haunted by the loss. Amabelle notes that no matter where she goes, she will “always be standing over [Odette’s] body.” Amabelle’s perpetual remorse illustrates the never-ending effect that death has on the living.
In order to persevere through the crushing weight of loss, many of the novel’s characters use different coping mechanisms. For example, Amabelle begins to treat her life as a “living death,” even though she has escaped the brutal Parsley Massacre. Despite her survival, her life is forever altered: she has lost her lover, Sebastien, and witnessed numerous atrocities. Grief-stricken, she tries to create a routine where “every day” passes “exactly like the one before.” Amabelle’s exposure to death has numbed her to the privilege of life; she looks for comfort in monotony, as this lets her avoid confronting her sense of loss. Yves, another survivor of the Parsley Massacre, loses himself in work to avoid dealing with his trauma. As a dedicated farmer, he is constantly “working the earth,” which lets him “believe that he had forgotten” what he has experienced. Furthermore, he confesses that “empty fields” remind him of the “dead season,” explicitly acknowledging that his workaholic behavior is a way of coping with his past and sense of loss. Yves’s work is a hollow distraction: he turns his life into a cycle of drudgery to cope with sadness, which suggests that he does not value his survival. Both Amabelle and Yves’s methods of distraction are unsuccessful, and drain the characters’ lives of significance or meaning.
Ultimately, however, these characters realize that they must confront their grief, and they begin to move on and allow hope and happiness to reenter their lives. For example, Amabelle begins to recall lessons about life continuing in the wake of tragedy. She notes how “the dead” leave “their words” for “their children’s inheritance,” and discusses wanting to “pass on” her memories of the “slaughter,” so that they do not “remain forever buried.” Amabelle’s thoughts indicate that she is becoming more comfortable with the idea of grief, and the concept of moving on. In fact, she even acknowledges that her grief should not be repressed forever; rather, it should be passed down, and become part of her future.
Amabelle joins a “parade of survivors,” noting that it is a “celebration of the living and the dead.” When someone compliments her on her dancing, she realizes that she has joined the festivities unconsciously. She sees people crying in the midst of dancing around her, and begins to understand that joy and sadness can coexist. Amabelle’s involuntary dancing indicates that she is ready to reckon with her loss; she has begun to treasure her survival, and celebrate life.
Near the novel’s end, Amabelle ventures down to the river where her parents drowned, and where she has witnessed the death of her loved ones. Amabelle reveals that she relives the moment of her parents’ death frequently, in order to look for an “answer” about how to “go on living” without them. This revelation confirms that death has not overtaken Amabelle’s life. Although she is burdened with loss, she searches for signs of encouragement about surviving without her parents, lover, or friends by her side.
In The Farming of Bones, fatal tragedies occur repeatedly. These pervasive tragedies prove that “there are cures for everything except death,” and illustrate how loss is an ever-present threat to life. In order to withstand this overwhelming sense of tragedy, multiple characters choose to avoid or suppress their sadness; in doing so, they are left unsatisfied, or are unappreciative of their existence. Eventually, however, the novel ends with scenes of recovery, acceptance, and optimism. Danticat crafts a gradual shift from despair to hope, illustrating how death is pervasive and how loss can sharpen one’s appreciation for life. Moreover, Danticat proves that despite its power, death cannot prevail fully over life.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Death, Grief, and Hope ThemeTracker
Death, Grief, and Hope Quotes in The Farming of Bones
“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.”
“[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.”
Señor Pico Duarte bore the name of one of the fathers of Dominican independence […] His eyes lingered on his son, his heir […]“I will name him Rafael, for the Generalissimo,” he said as Juana reswaddled the children even more securely than before. The señora agreed to this name with a coy nod. And so the boy became Rafael like the Generalissimo, the president of the republic.
The water rises above my father’s head. My mother releases his neck, the current carrying her beyond his reach. Separated, they are less of an obstacle for the cresting river. I scream until I can taste blood in my throat, until I can no longer hear my own voice […] I walk down to the sands to throw [myself] into the water […]
Two of the river boys grab me and […] pin me down to the ground until I become still. “Unless you want to die,” one of them says, “you will never see those people again.”
“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.”
“Are you certain you don’t want to keep this face for yourself?” I asked.
“I’ve made many,” he said, “for all those who, even when I’m gone, will keep my son in mind. If I could, I would carry them all around my neck, I would, like some men wear their amulets […] The elder of your house, Don Ignacio, he’s not asked again to come and see me, no? […] I’m not surprised,” he said, “that my son has already vanished from his thoughts.”
“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.”
Perhaps working the earth […] could make him believe that he had forgotten […] I imagined [other refugees] going forward in their lives, I wanted to bring them out of my visions into my life, to tell them how glad I was that they had been able to walk into the future, but most important to ask them how it was that they could be so strong […]
“How did you keep on with the planting, even when nothing was growing?” I asked Yves.
[…] “Empty houses and empty fields make me sad,” he said. “They are both too calm, like the dead season.”
“Old age is not meant to be survived alone,” Man Rapadou said, her voice trailing with her own hidden thoughts. “Death should come gently, slowly, like a man’s hand approaching your body […] From time to time, life takes you by surprise. You sit in your lakou eating mangoes. You let the mango seeds fall where they may, and one day you wake up and there’s a mango tree in your yard.”
I knew she meant this as a compliment to me, a kind word for my sudden arrival at her house some years before.
I thought that if I relived the moment often enough, the answer would become clear, that they had wanted either for us all to die together or for me to go on living, even if by myself. I also thought that if I came to the river on the right day, at the right hour, the surface of the water might provide the answer: a clearer sense of the moment, a stronger memory. But nature has no memory. And soon, perhaps, neither will I.
I slipped into the current […]with my shoulders only half submerged, the current floating over me in a less than gentle caress, the pebbles in the riverbed scouring my back.
I looked to my dreams for softness, for a gentler embrace, for relief from the fear of mudslides and blood bubbling out of the riverbed, where it is said the dead add their tears to the river flow.
