The Farming of Bones

by

Edwidge Danticat

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Themes and Colors
The Power of Memory Theme Icon
Dreams vs. Reality Theme Icon
Language and Identity Theme Icon
Death, Grief, and Hope Theme Icon
Home, Family, and Belonging Theme Icon
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.
Language and Identity Theme Icon

In The Farming of Bones, groups of Haitians have settled uneasily in the Dominican Republic. Eventually, rising racial tensions lead to the 1937 Parsley Massacre, where Dominicans slaughtered thousands of Haitians. To identify and target Haitians, Dominican soldiers conducted a “linguistic test” about the pronunciation of the Spanish word for parsley, “perejil.” In Danticat’s historical novel, languages are used to define and classify one’s nationality, and differentiate between groups; ultimately, these differences are used to justify violence. Still, Danticat complicates the divisive power of language by creating characters that speak multiple dialectsthese characters demonstrate how cultural differences are not always clear cut. In this way, Danticat illustrates how language and nationality can be closely connected, but suggests that these classifications are ultimately malleable.

Throughout the novel, Danticat emphasizes that Haitian Creole and Spanish are central to Haitian and Dominican identity, and highlights the tensions that arise between these two nationalities. In one scene, a Haitian man claims that Dominicans treat Haitians as “foreigners” even if multiple generations were born in the Dominican Republic. The man claims that this line of thinking “makes it easier for them to push” Haitians out. This man makes this observation in Haitian Creole, a language that Haitians “most often” use amongst themselves in place of Spanish. By highlighting that this conversation about identity is in Haitian Creole, the narrator emphasizes the ways in which language is used to separate communities from one another.

In another scene, Señor Valencia recalls an interaction in Amabelle’s childhood: Amabelle was asked “who [she] belonged to,” and had replied that she “belonged” to herself. It is significant that Amabelle makes this declaration in Haitian Creole, representing how her identity is affirmed through language. Moreover, this discussion occurs alongside the “Massacre River,” named for a bloody dispute between French and Spanish settlers. As the river is a symbol of warring national forces, Amabelle’s use of Haitian Creole reinforces her cultural identity and her loyalty to her homeland.

As Amabelle joins a group of refugees, she interacts with two Dominican sisters who do not “speak any Kreyòl.” The group splits up, saying the Dominican Republic is the sisters’ country; the refugees tell the sisters to “find the border themselves.” In this way, language is once again used to demarcate national loyalties, as the Haitian refugees treat the sisters differently due to their inability to speak Haitian Creole.

Danticat then illustrates how these distinctions in language are often used to justify conflict. For example, at one point in the novel, Amabelle is in the midst of a crowd of nationalistic Dominicans and hears “worried Kreyòl-whispering voices.” She guesses these speakers “might have wanted” to gather together, but understands that this “would be dangerous.” Amabelle begins to realize that differences in language can provoke tension: speaking Haitian Creole can draw unwanted attention and suspicion, and has the potential to spark danger.

Eventually, Dominican soldiers discover Amabelle and other Haitians, and they tell the Haitians to correctly pronounce “perejil,” the word for parsley. The soldiers start to assault them before they can speak; to the soldiers, the refugees’ identity is immediately self-evident, and foreign. As the attack occurs, a crowd sings the Dominican national anthem and tramples over Amabelle. As Amabelle is effectively silenced by a crowd singing in Spanish, the crowd symbolizes one language and nationality violently overpowering another.

Dominican propaganda discusses how languages “reveal who belongs on what side,” thereby presupposing that two groups speaking different dialects must be enemies. This propaganda illustrates how feelings of cultural difference can be manipulated into an antagonistic relationship between nationalities. Furthermore, this messaging reinforces how language is sometimes used to define both a person’s allegiance and nationality. In this way, conflicting languages are symbolic of conflicting loyalties, and provide a rationale for distrust.

Although language is a source of conflict in the novel, many characters in the novel speak both Spanish and Haitian Creole. This multilingualism challenges the idea that language reaffirms a single identity. These characters provide examples of how language can subvert static cultural labels.

As an example, one woman describes the feeling of being caught between two countries. Although she is of Haitian descent, she and her son were born in the Dominican Republic. This woman speaks “a mix of Alegrían Kreyòl and Spanish,” a “tangled language” spoken by people “caught […] between two nearly native tongues.” This woman’s ability to meld two languages illustrates the ways in which language defies bordersculturally, she cannot be defined by a single, national label.

Furthermore, Amabelle describes the universality of parsley to further demonstrate how words both define and cross borders. Although the word for “parsley” is used by Dominicans to test whether a speaker is Haitian, Amabelle proves that “pesi, perejil, parsley” is “commonplace.” She discusses how the Haitians use it for “food” and “teas” and “baths”these descriptions demonstrate parsley’s neutrality. As an object, parsley is not special to one nation; as a word, it is used to divide Haitians from Dominicans.

Lastly, during the soldiers’ assault, Amabelle claims that she “could have said the word” for parsley “properly.” She admits “the trill of the r and the precision of the j” is “burdensome,” but asserts that she knows “how to say pesi,” the Haitian pronunciation, and “perejil” in Spanish. Amabelle’s bilingualism reaffirms that cultural labels are not fixed: although she is Haitian, she is capable of saying “perejil” in a way identifies her as a native to the Dominican Republic. Despite her nationality, her connection to Dominican culture transcends language barriers.

Throughout Danticat’s work, language is used to draw distinctions between Dominicans and Haitians. In fact, a single worldpronounced differently in Haitian Creole and Spanishis used to identify characters’ ethnicity, demonstrating how language and identity are inseparable concepts. Language emphasizes differences between cultures and these differences are, in turn, used as justification for cruelty. Oftentimes, however, cultural differences are not straightforward: Danticat’s characters, who are often capable of inhabiting multiple identities, illustrate this complexity. Danticat’s story proves that language is merely a facet of a character’s existence, and demonstrates that feelings of nationality and belonging are dynamic and flexible.

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Language and Identity Quotes in The Farming of Bones

Below you will find the important quotes in The Farming of Bones related to the theme of Language and Identity.
Chapter 2 Quotes

“And my daughter favors you,” she said. “My daughter is a chameleon. She’s taken your color from the mere sight of your face.” […] “Amabelle do you think my daughter will always be the color she is now?” Senora Valencia asked. “My poor love, what if she’s mistaken for one of your people?”

Related Characters: Señora Valencia (speaker), Amabelle Désir, Rosalinda
Page Number: 11–12
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

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.

Related Characters: Señor Pico (speaker), Señora Valencia, Juana, Rafael, The Generalissimo / Trujillo
Page Number: 34–35
Explanation and Analysis:

Above Papi’s head loomed a large portrait of the Generalissimo, which Señora Valencia had painted at her husband’s request. Her painting was a vast improvement on many of the Generalissimo’s public photographs. She had made him a giant in full military regalia, with vast fringed epaulets and clusters of medals aligned in neat rows under the saffron braiding across his chest. Behind him was the country’s red and blue flag with the white cross in the middle, along with the coat of arms and the shield: Dios, patria, libertad. God, country, liberty.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Don Ignacio, The Generalissimo / Trujillo
Page Number: 34–35
Explanation and Analysis:

I did something I always did at times when I couldn’t bring myself to go out and discover an unpleasant truth. (When you have so few remembrances, you cling to them tightly and repeat them over and over in your mind so time will not erase them.) I closed my eyes and imagined the giant citadel that loomed over my parents’ house in Haiti. […] As a child, I played in the deserted war rooms of Henry I’s citadel. I peered at the rest of the world from behind its columns and archways, and the towers that were meant to hold cannons for repelling the attack of ships at sea. From the safety of these rooms, I saw the entire northern cape […].

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker)
Related Symbols: The Citadel
Page Number: 44–45
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“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 12 Quotes

Now Kongo was bathing in the middle of the stream, scrubbing his body with a handful of wet parsley […] We used pesi, perejil, parsley […] for our food, our teas, our baths, to cleanse our insides as well as our outsides of old aches and griefs, to shed a passing year’s dust as a new one dawned, to wash a new infant’s hair for the first time and—along with boiled orange leaves—a corpse’s remains one final time.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Kongo
Page Number: 59–60
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

“I pushed my son out of my body here, in this country,” one woman said in a mix of Alegrían Kreyòl and Spanish, the tangled language of those who always stuttered as they spoke, caught as they were on the narrow ridge between two nearly native tongues […]

“To them we are always foreigners, even if our granmèmès’ granmèmès were born in this country,” a man responded in Kreyol, which we most often spoke—instead of Spanish—among ourselves.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker)
Page Number: 67
Explanation and Analysis:

At times you could sit for a whole evening with such individuals, just listening to their existence unfold […] it was their way of returning home, with you as a witness […]. In [Father Romain’s] sermons to the Haitian congregants of the valley he often reminded everyone of common ties: language, foods, history, carnival, songs, tales, and prayers. His creed was one of memory, how remembering—though sometimes painful—can make you strong.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Father Romain
Page Number: 71
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 27 Quotes

“We are Dominicanas,” Dolores explained.

“They took him,” Doloritas added. “They came in the night and took him from our bed.”

“We have yet to learn your language,” Dolores said.

“We are together six months, me and my man,” Doloritas said. “I told him I would learn Kreyòl for when we visit his family in Haiti.”

“I know nothing,” Dolores said. “Doloritas was lost when they took him. She wanted to go to the border to look for him.

Related Characters: Doloritas (speaker), Dolores (speaker)
Page Number: 175
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

“This is their country. Let them find the border themselves. They can go to any village in these mountains, and the people will welcome them.”

[…] The sisters would not have as many obstacles as we would in Dajabón. If they were asked to say “perejil,” they could say it with ease. In most of our mouths, their names would be tinged with or even translated into Kreyòl, the way the name of Doloritas’ man slid towards the Spanish each time she evoked him.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Wilner (speaker)
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 29 Quotes

“Tell us what this is,” one said. “Que diga perejil.”

At that moment I did believe that had 1 wanted to, I could have said the word properly, calmly, slowly, the way I often asked “Perejil?” of the old Dominican women and their faithful attending granddaughters at the roadside gardens and markets, even though the trill of the r and the precision of the j was sometimes too burdensome a joining for my tongue […] with all my senses calm, I could have said it. But I didn’t get my chance.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker)
Page Number: 191
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 34 Quotes

The priests at the cathedral listen and mark down testimonials of the slaughter […] They’re collecting tales for newspapers and radio men. The Generalissimo has found ways to buy and sell the ones here. Even this region has been corrupted with his money.”

[…] “Will you go yourself to see these priests?” I asked.

“I know what will happen,” he said. “You tell the story, and then it’s retold as they wish, written in words you do not understand, in a language that is theirs, and not yours.”

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), Yves (speaker)
Page Number: 244
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 36 Quotes

“On this island, walk too far in either direction and people speak a different language,” continued Father Romain with aimless determination. “Our motherland is Spain; theirs is darkest Africa, you understand? […] We, as Dominicans, must have our separate traditions and our own ways of living. If not, in less than three generations, we will all be Haitians.”

[...] “He was beaten badly every day,” the sister said. […] “Sometimes he remembers everything. Sometimes, he forgets all of it, everything, even me.”

Related Characters: Father Romain (speaker), Amabelle Désir
Page Number: 258–259 
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 37 Quotes

You may be surprised what we use our dreams to do, how we drape them over our sight and carry them like amulets to protect us from evil spells.

My dreams are now only visitations of my words for the absent justice of the peace, for the Generalissimo himself.

He asked for “perejil,” but there is much more we all knew how to say. Perhaps one simple word would not have saved our lives. Many more would have to and many more will.

Related Characters: Amabelle Désir (speaker), The Generalissimo / Trujillo
Page Number: 263
Explanation and Analysis: