Haiti’s (Dis)comorting Legacy: Sexual Abuse and Religious Thought Control In Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory

In her novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat makes public the silenced history of sexually-traumatized Haitian women, a history of what Donette A. Francis refers to as “silences too horrific to disturb.” Haitian history has been written primarily by men, therefore Danticat exposes the repressed accounts of various women affected by sexual abuse in an attempt to write their sufferings into Haiti’s social history. Through the eyes of Sophie, Martine, Tante Atie, Ife, the Haitian community of women, Sophie’s therapist, and the members of her sex therapy group, Danticat reveals the psychological effects of living as a woman in a “rape culture.” In the novel, the Caco women suffer the indignity of sexual abuse in places as public as a cane field and as private as one’s own bed, and the perpetrators range from agents of the state to one’s own mother, indicating that this “rape culture” permeates every aspect of Haitian society. In Haiti, women are subjected and objectified through a violent and forceful system of patriarchy. Unfortunately, this patriarchal system is reinforced by the society’s religious ideologies, which, at a glance offer sympathy and courage to women. However, a closer look at the history of religion in Haiti, combined with the testimonies in Danticat’s novel, proves that Haitian women actually perpetuate the cycle of female subordination by embracing religious customs that serve as mechanisms for patriarchy.

In his article, “Junta, Rape, and the Religion in Haiti, 1993-1994,” Terry Rey cites the definition of “rape culture”:

It is a complex of beliefs that encourages male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself (qtd. in “Junta” 75).

In this culture, Rey states, sexual violence is accepted as a method of maintaining relationships with women. He also cites Ira Lowenthal’s research on Haitian language to illustrate his point:

In terminology for intercourse … [a] subject/object relationship [is] rendered so apparent; the terminology also reveals that male aggression is part and parcel of the sexual act. Slang terms (gwo mo) for intercourse are active verbs, almost invariably taking a male subject and a female object in this context, and referring literally to such actions as “cutting” (koupe), “beating” (taye), “hitting” (frappe), “bending” (plwaye), “plucking” (plimen), “shaving” (raze), “pounding” (pile) and “killing” (touye) (qtd. in “Junta” 80).

Statistics illuminate the scope of sexual violence within the country. According to a 1990 study, “the first sexual experience of nearly one in three Haitian women transpires against her will. Thirty-seven percent of all Haitian women fall victim to sexual assaults, with more than a third of these involving rape. Eighty percent of Haitian men “cited cases in which violence against women is justified,” and over half (61 percent) claimed that their wives deserved beatings if they wasted money. Even Haitian law reinforces men’s objectification and abuse of women. Article 269 of the penal code permits a man to kill his wife should he catch her in the act of adultery: “Murder committed by a husband against his wife and/or her accomplice or both, should he surprise them and catch them in the act in the conjugal home, is excusable” (“Junta” 79-80).

Rey also points out that there is no such law permitting women to kill their unfaithful husbands, who face only a maximum $50 fine if they are convicted of adultery. However, rape is punishable by law. In the rare case that a rape conviction arises, it is categorized as an “assault on morals” rather than an attack against the physical, emotional, and psychological integrity of the woman. The “attack on morals,” essentially, damages the honor of the woman, whose value as property becomes lessened once her virginity is lost. As illustrated by the testing of daughters in Breath, Eyes, Memory, Haitian women are preoccupied with purity in order to provide men with honorable wives. If a man determines his new bride is not a virgin, he has the right to reverse the marriage and send the “damaged goods” back to her family (“Junta” 81). In her book, Haiti, History and the Gods, Joan Dayan claims that Haitian women are primarily “vessels for the taxonomic vocations of white male supremacy” who are “alternatively etherealized and brutalized, represented as angels, virgins, furies, or wenches.” She says that Haiti is a “world where purity [is] never simply metaphysical but physical as well, where a body trait (whiteness or blackness) [becomes] spiritual truth (purity or impurity, angel or demon) …” (“Haiti” 267). Dayan’s statement makes an important assessment, which is that male dominance in Haiti is reinforced through spiritual conventions.

Religion in Haiti is a strange breed of Catholicism and Voudou. In his article, “Politics and Religion in Haiti,” David Nicholis explains that Roman Catholicism was the official religion of the French colony of Saint-Dominigue, but that in the colonial period, it failed to convert large numbers of the African slaves. The white colonials thought of the slaves’ religious customs as little more than “superstition,” and ignored the religious and political dimension of Voudou. Although the Africans adhered to the ideology they brought with them, they were still willing to incorporate much of Christianity into their religion. Governed by one god and a plethora of loas, or spirits, Voudou made room for the inclusion of yet another deity, the Christian God (Nicholis 401-402). The church, Nicholis writes, has been generally tolerant of the cult, hoping to one day wean people away from Voudou beliefs and practices. However, the outcome of this tolerance is more a hybridization of the two religions (Nicholis 404). As colonials introduced elements of Christianity, the slaves adopted saints as loas, particularly relating to the story of the Virgin Mary. However, they made use of these Christian symbols by transfiguring them into their own African terms (“Politics” 525). As Elizabeth McAlister states in her book, Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora, “To a significant degree, both Voudou and Catholicism have incorporated the other into its philosophies and practices. Each tradition is constitutive and revealing of the other” (123).

Of the colonials’ perception of Voudou as mere “superstition,” Nicholis writes, “The Haitian … is neither more nor less superstitious than people of other nationalities; he conserves his folk traditions in the symbols and in the liturgy of his folk religion” (404). The cult, he argues, has fulfilled an important social function by preserving Haitian tradition among the masses. This tradition not only gives collective strength to the community, but “preserve[s] the histories ignored, denigrated, or exoticized by the standard, ‘imperial’ histories” (“Erzulie” 5). The early leaders of Haiti were critical of the practice of Voudou, and encouraged the adherence to Christianity so that other countries would see Haiti as an independent and respectable nation. Toussaint Louverture banned dancing and outlawed religious and social gatherings at night, when Voudou rituals generally took place. Jean-Jacques Dessalines also forbade dancing, and occasionally punished Voudou worshippers with death. Henri Christophe, too, suppressed Voudou and attempted to reintroduce Christianity into the country. It wasn’t until the reign of Francois Duvalier (1957-1971) and his son Jean-Claude (1971-1986) that Voudou was formally recognized and, to some extent, accepted. Insisting that the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church should no longer be foreign-dominated, the former Duvalier used folklore symbolism associated with Voudou to enhance his prestige among the masses and to subvert the colonial domination of the church (Nicholis 414). The Duvalier regime has the most political impact on the women in Breath, Eyes, Memory. With the use of religion, Papa Doc and Baby Doc turned Haiti into a terrorist state that permitted – and even mandated – the abuse of its women.

In her article, “Challenging Internal Colonialism: Edwidge Danticat’s Feminist Emancipatory Enterprise,” Newtona Johnson cites Ngugi wa Thiongo’s definition of “decolonizing the mind”:

[Colonialism’s] most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic or political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others (qtd. in Johnson 152).

Rey claims that “notions of suffering as redemptive, the legitimization of militaristic domination, and the socialization of Haitian women to accept, if not to aspire to, submissive forms of motherhood are three central factors in the development and perpetuation of Haiti’s rape culture” (“Junta” 89). He also points out that throughout Haitian history, military regimes have consistently benefited from a relationship with the Catholic Church. This relationship has allowed military leaders to impose “images of control, authority, and maleness” onto Haitian women, particularly through the positioning of God as the ultimate father. This tradition “sacralizes domination,” placing God first, men second, and women subjugated to both (“Junta” 89-90). Women are encouraged to remain passive and submissive through this ideology. Rey also claims that women who practice Voudou “fall most often victim to sexual violence in comparison with Catholics, Protestants, and women claiming no religious affiliation” (“Junta” 93). Since the Duvalier regimes supported the practice of Voudou, it is not surprising that Haitian women became the target of state-sponsored sexual abuse. Despite the comforting, healing notions it purports to offer, religion in Haiti has often served as a powerful tool for propagating patriarchy.

The “rape culture” of Haiti has basically existed since its colonization, and has been especially predominant in periods of political upheaval. Since the country’s inception, new regimes have implemented the sexual abuse against women associated with the former power (“Junta” 82). Dessalines authorized his troops’ rape and slaughter of French women; Christophe’s troops were responsible for a massacre of mulattos that was accompanied by a mass rape of mulatto women; Conquest rapes between black peasants and state authorities took place during the regime of President Sylvian Salnave; and during the first American occupation of Haiti, Marines were responsible for the drunken rapes of local Haitian women (“Junta” 83). In Breath, Eyes, Memory, the Caco name symbolically links the women to the Cacos, the peasant guerillas that maintained armed resistance against the Marines (Francis 77).

The most intensive period of militaristic abuse against women took place during the Duvalier regime. According to Rey, “there is ample evidence that Francois Duvalier employed sexual violence and humiliation both as a weapon of intimidation against his political opposition … and as a part of his agenda to create a black elite to counter the long-standing dominance of Haiti’s mulatto elite” (“Junta” 84). Under this regime, women emerged as a distinct category subject to surveillance, discipline and punishment. Yet, as Francis explains, “their narratives of sexual violations were rendered invisible as the state exercised its power to obscure violations against women by dismissing their testimonies as nonsensical or inconsequential to the political life of the Haitian society” (79). The Duvalier administration was responsible for employing and enforcing gender-specific violence on a wider scale than ever before in Haitian history. Prior to Papa Doc’s reign, patriarchal codes defined children, women, and the elderly as “political innocents,” with their status as dependents. As such, women were exempt from state violence. Duvalier’s administration, however, ushered in a new definition for women: “enemies of the state.” Under this system, “when women voiced their political opinions in support of women’s rights or the opposition party, they were defined as ‘subversive, unpatriotic and unnatural’ … [and] were deserving of punishment, which often took the form of sexual torture” (Francis 78).

In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat illuminates a culture that had become infiltrated by the violent and bloody Tonton Macoutes, the Duvalier personal security force. This group infiltrated “the press, business, voodoo temples, labor unions, and especially the army,” bearing guns “as an ever-mounting body count attested.” According to Paul Farmer in The Uses of Haiti, “the best way of staying alive in Haiti was to have a powerful macoute as guardian angel” (qtd. in Johnson 153). In Danticat’s novel, Sophie’s mother, Martine, was raped and impregnated by a member of the Tonton Macoutes. She suffers from recurring nightmares, unable to escape her unspeakable past. According to Sophie, in Haiti, “nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms” (Danticat 234). These nightmares manifest themselves in the form of stories, like the tale about the woman who has blood pouring out of her skin, so she asks the Voudoun loa of love, Erzulie, to change her into a butterfly so she will never bleed again. Ironically, even though butterflies do not suffer as women do, they don't live very long lives. Martine takes her own life, becoming Sophie's butterfly, and exchanging her womanly suffering for a shortened life span. Sophie addresses her frustration with Haitian patriarchy and female abuse by attacking the cane in the field where her mother was raped. By attacking the cane, she is battling against her mother's perpetrator, the state-enforced oppression of women in Haiti, and men in general.

The Caco women have internalized the patriarchal mindset in Haiti, an indication of the depth of thought control imposed by colonial forces. They are active participants in what Sophie calls a “virginity cult,” where mothers physically test the sexual integrity of their daughters (Danticat 154). At the helm of this cult is the Virgin Mary, who is regularly referred to throughout the text, signifying her importance to the Caco women. Sophie actually recites the Virgin Mother's Prayer as her mother tests her for the first time. Since Martine was raped and impregnated with Sophie, Sophie has a “Madonna image” of her mother. She finds it hard to imagine her mother sexually. Sophie begins an internal spiritual, political and sexual transformation by recognizing the trauma that testing brings to Haitian women. Tante Atie describes Haitian mothers' treatment of their daughters:

They train you to find a husband … They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee, to find out if you're peeing too loud. If you pee loud, it means you've got big spaces between your legs (Danticat 136-137).

Sophie refers to the testing as “humiliation” (Danticat 123). She also says that to her, “men were as mysterious … as white people” (Danticat 67). Most men get wrapped up in the violence of the culture or lose their sense of obligation to the family's honor, and therefore, are simply not around to support the women of Haiti. Still, the practice of testing is solely for the benefit of males, and the culture awards greater political advantage to them. For example, as illustrated in the novel, when a baby boy is born, a light shines outside of the birthing house. If a baby girl is born, the light is extinguished for the mother to sit alone in the darkness with her new daughter (Danticat 146). Additionally, Tante Atie says that the men in Haiti “insist that their women are virgins and have ten fingers” (Danticat 151). Ife tells Sophie that it was her duty to keep her daughters chaste until they were ready for marriage. A woman's purity would directly reflect the honor of her husband. Sophie tells the story of a man who chose a virgin to marry, and on their wedding night, cuts her to make her bleed in order to defend his honor. The woman dies and the man parades around showing off sheets stained with her blood (Danticat 155).

Danticat exposes this internalization of patriarchy through a number of spiritual images that outwardly offer women peace and security, but inwardly bind them to the system that dominates them. During Sophie’s testing, Martine tells her that they “could be like Marassas,” spiritual twins in the Voudou religion (Danticat 85). According to Miriam J.A. Chancey, “Danticat uses the symbol of the marassa … to highlight the divisions that are created between two women who have been brought up to deny their sexuality as well as each other,” but that “the image of her mother as her marassa only serves to terrorize Sophie and alienate her from her identity, which becomes both sexualized and demonized in its association (by the mother) with Voudou” (120-124).

The Caco women’s devotion to the Virgin Mary stems from an association with the Voudou loa of love, Erzulie, who is referred to just as much within Danticat’s novel. Identifications and descriptions of Erzulie are many. To some, she is Venus, to others, the Virgin Mary herself. She is both a saint and the devil incarnate. She typically appears in one of three emanations – “as Erzulie-Freda, the lady of luxury and love; as Erzulie-Dantor, the black woman of passion identified in Catholic chromolithographs with the Mater Salvatoris, her heart pierced with a daggar; and as Erzulie-ge-rouge, the red-eyed militant of fury and vengeance.” Though a woman, she oscillates between masculine and feminine gender roles, taking on a “garb of feminity – and even speaks excellent French – in order to confound and discard the culturally defined roles of men and women” (“Erzulie” 6). Especially empowering for Haitian women, most accounts Erzulie pertain to her treatment of men and how they must serve her. Servants of Erzulie can, at least metaphysically, experience an escape from colonialism and the suffocating patriarchy it employs. Embedded in Erzulie’s image are “all the uses, pleasures and violations of women in Haiti” throughout history (“Erzulie” 16).

Still, the most binding aspect of Haiti’s rape culture is the widespread devotion to the Virgin Mary. Due to her symbiotic relationship with Erzulie, Haitians easily assimilated her story into their own religious ideology. However, “Orthodox Mariology, which depicts the Virgin Mary as a model of submission and obedience, has come under attack by many feminists as one of the linchpins of Christian – especially Catholic Christian – patriarchy.” Rey argues that “the traditional images and theology of Mary carry psychological messages which are patriarchal and destructive to women’s self-development.” He cites Mary Daly, who actually identifies the Virgin Mary as the original rape victim, “a reminder to women of their destiny to be raped, for in the patriarchal system, a virgin is a future rape victim” (“Junta” 91). Daly’s assessment is in reference to the Virgin’s spiritual Annunciation: “I am the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38). She completely submits her body to the will of God, setting an example for passivity amongst righteous women. Because she was a mortal woman, she is not considered a distant, ethereal goddess, but a sister and mother embroiled in the struggles of womankind. Therefore, she becomes a powerful religious symbol for rape survivors in Haiti.

In her article, “Mary and Femininity: A Psychological Critique,” Patricia A. Harrington addresses the mentality behind feminine passivity, like exhibited by the Virgin Mary. She says that faith is defined as “a feminine attitude of passive receptivity to a loving father, and is most highly exemplified in a young woman consenting to conceive that father’s son. For someone to identify with Mary means, in psychological terms, that she would take up a passive attitude toward a father figure” (213). It follows, then, that servitors of the Virgin Mary should allow themselves to be both politically and sexually passive to male authorities. In many patriarchal societies, the Virgin Mary serves as a model for the femininity that all women are expected to exhibit. Harrington supports Rosemary Ruether’s argument that “the patriarchal split between activity and passivity along hierarchical sexist lines has resulted in the association of Mary with passivity, to the detriment of women.” She adds that “Mary cannot be a liberating symbol for women as long as [she] preserves this meaning of ‘femininity’ that is the complementary underside of masculine domination” (Harrington 213-214). A confusing duality exists within this construct of virgin mother. Women are expected to remain chaste but fill the role of a maternal figure. Despite the colonial projection of the Virgin Mary and its insistence on women’s purity, Haitian tradition tells women that it is not good to be a virgin, no matter what the priests, nuns, or prospective partners claim. One of the most feared spirits in Voudou culture is the djablesse. The djablesse is the ghost of a virgin having died before the opportunity to marry. She wanders the forests and cities, “condemned to walk for a number of years for the sin of having died a virgin.” According to Dayan, “If you believe in the Church, then you must remain chaste until marriage, but if you listen to the gods, then you must be physically possessed in order to rest in peace” (“Erzulie” 26).

Despite religious customs or conventions, Sophie ends the practice of testing by taking her own virginity with a pestle. Even though she does not participate in sexual relations with a man, she dismantles her chastity, breaking her bond to the Virgin Mary. Eventually, she recognizes that the individual agonies of the Caco women were “links in a long chain” of patriarchal abuse (Danticat 203). It is important to note that in addition to joining a sexual phobia group to deal with her trauma, Sophie also visits a therapist, who is an initiated Santeria priestess. Rey claims that “in Haiti, victims of politically motivated sexual assault have additional reasons for steering clear of secular authorities” and that “like rape survivors elsewhere, they are likely to be reluctant to trust male counselors.” Voudou priestesses and other women of traditional healing, who already serve as secondary health care providers for the majority of Haitian people, generally offer the best avenues of recovery for rape victims (“Junta” 97). The fact that a religious woman offers Sophie an avenue to heal herself indicates that challenging the trauma caused by testing is not blasphemous. Once Sophie learns that her mother is pregnant out of wedlock, the Madonna image is shattered. After Martine kills herself, Sophie dresses her for her funeral from head to toe in bright red, calling her a “Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them” (Danticat 227). Sophie abandons her Virgin Mary mentality for one that puts women in control. No longer will she allow spiritual conventions to control her sexuality.

In Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat pulls back the veil on a society that has repressed the history of sexual abuse amongst its women. She illustrates how women oppressed by patriarchy internalize the political and gendered weaponry utilized by men in a “rape culture.” This patriarchal structure depends primarily on religious images to distort the value of women and to inscribe specific gender roles upon them.


Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.

Dayan, Joan. “Erzulie: A Women’s History of Haiti.” Research in African Literatures 25.2 (1994): 5-31. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History and the Gods. Berkely: University of California Press, 1995. Print.

Chancy, Myrian J. A. Framing Silence: Revolutionary Novels By Haitian Women. New Jersey: Rutgers, 1970. Print.

Francis, Donette A. “’Silences Too Horrific to Disturb’: Writing Sexual Histories in Edwidge Danticat’s Breath, Eyes, Memory.” Research in African Literatures 35.2 (2004): 75-90. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

Harrington, Patricia A. “Mary and Femininity: A Psychological Critique.” Journal of Religion and Health 23.3 (1984): 204-217. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

Johnson, Newtona. “Challenging Internal Colonialism: Edwidge Danticat’s Feminist Emancipatory Enterprise.” Obsidian III Literature in the African Diaspora 6.2, 7.1 (2005-2006): 147-166. Print.

McAlister, Elizabeth. Rara! Vodou, Power, and Performance in Haiti and Its Diaspora. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Print.

Nicholis, David. “Politics and Religion in Haiti.” Canadian Journal of Political Science 3.3 (1970): 400-414. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

Rey, Terry. “Junta, Rape, and Religion in Haiti, 1993-1994.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 15.2 (1999): 73-100. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

Rey, Terry. “The Politics of Patron Sainthood in Haiti: 500 Years of Iconic Struggle.” The Catholic Historical Review 88.3 (2002): 519-545. JSTOR. 20 May 2010. Print.

“Angry, Even Unto Death”: Melville’s Implementation of Biblical Lore in Moby-Dick

Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick is a collection of American folklore, Greek myth, primitive ritual, and biblical legend. Its narrator, the ever-curious and metaphorical Ishmael, interprets the events aboard the Pequod whaling ship through these traditional, cultural lenses. Through biblical allusions and references to the ancient world, Melville creates an extensive background for his story. Because biblical lore is so indiscriminately mixed with ancient history, the tale takes on a rather timeless quality. It also becomes difficult to determine where myth ends and proven history begins. This epic backdrop magnifies Melville’s simple, mundane characters, making them appear larger and more significant than life, and thus, Moby-Dick becomes a tale of legendary proportions.

Most prevalent in Moby-Dick is Melville’s use of biblical allusion. Several characters in the book are named after characters from either the Old or New Testament. Captain Ahab is a reflection of King Ahab, the evil Israelite king who, as recorded in 1 Kings, angers God with his idolatry. Captain Ahab, too, is an ominous figure, with a perverse kind of obsession with the white whale. Like the king, the captain also denies the prophecy of his death, assuming he will be victorious in battle. Ishamel and Queequeg are approached by a local lunatic named Elijah before setting out on the Pequod. Elijah attempts to dissuade the men from dealings with Captain Ahab. Elijah shares his name with the Tishbite prophet who denounced King Ahab and proclaimed to bring evil against him and his posterity. Captain Bildad bears the name of one of Job’s friends. Like the Shuite, Captain Bildad is full of proverbial wisdom and pious dialogue. Pip, short for Pippin, proves to be the holiest of the crew. His name reflects “the good seed … children of the kingdom” (Matthew 13:38), the purest of God’s progeny. Melville’s Pip, however, exhibits a mindless type of purity that proves passive and effeminate. These are just a few of the many characters given biblical names and backgrounds throughout the prose of Moby-Dick.
In addition to the incorporation of biblical names, the biblical theme of prophecy permeates the text, corresponding to the different historical stages of Hebrew prophecy. First, there is the prophecy of the simple foreteller, like Elijah. Next, an intermediary or spokesman for God, such as Father Mapple, the priest who gives the foreboding sermon about Jonah at the beginning of the novel, delivers prophecy. In the fashion of the book of Daniel, prophecy takes an apocalyptic turn with the appearance of Gabriel, the sailor aboard the Jeroboam who professes Moby Dick to be the incarnation of the Shaker god. Finally, Melville incorporates Captain Ahab’s false prophet, Fedallah, a representation of the 400 false prophets whom King Ahab denies.

Allegorically, the most important biblical references in Moby-Dick are to the stories of Job and Jonah. Captain Ahab shares the same confusion and frustration with God that both of these Old Testament characters exhibit. All three men question God’s action and intentions. Captain Ahab also differs somewhat deliberately from the biblical characters. Unlike Job, he is not patient with God, and he does not bow before the whirlwind of his might. Although the plot most significantly follows chapters 1 and 2 from the book of Jonah, Captain Ahab does not fit the mold for the characterization of the Jonah in this story, either. Instead of confessing his sins against God and being thrown overboard by his crew, Captain Ahab professes his judgment of God and unites his crew of miscreants in rebellion against him. He rather reflects the Jonah of chapters 3 and 4, the Jonah who professes he “[does] well to be angry, even unto death” (Jonah 4:9). Moby-Dick’s narrator, Ishmael, better represents the patience of Job as well as the spared Jonah of the first two chapters.

Captain Ahab, then, serves as Melville’s anti-hero, a leader determined to rid his people of an evil entity, even though his grievance against God is a personal matter. Ishmael is Melville’s folk hero, a character who observes and muses with a vast and colorful imagination, and whose metamorphic presence allows him to go places and see things that the reader cannot. Through these two heroes, Melville expounds upon and complicates the stories of Job and Jonah. The moral implications of Melville’s message are possibly just as unknowable as the white whale and God prove to be to his characters. His use of biblical allusion provides an exposition of the different approaches to living in a world where men have limited knowledge and capacity to understand. Father Mapple’s unquestioning fatalism is one such approach. Captain Ahab’s vengeful defiance against God is another. Ishmael ponders the wonders of the world, and even relates to Captain Ahab’s despair, participating in his revenge plot, but does not commit himself to purity or evil. He is neither passive nor active, in a sense. He is also the only character spared at the novel’s end. Ishmael’s salvation is through Queequeg the cannibal, his soul mate who finds peace by connecting with his fellow man. Melville’s purpose, it seems, is to employ a humanistic theme alongside the theological, a theme that resonates long after the battle for knowledge comes to a close. In the end, the testament of the struggles and relationships of mortal men aboard the Pequod are all that remain.

Melville sets the standard for religious piety with Father Mapple’s sermon in the beginning of Moby-Dick. The priest delivers a passionate address regarding the book of Jonah. He animatedly recounts Jonah’s flight from God’s command, his time on the sea as well as in the belly of the whale, his repentance, and God’s redemption and reward for his obedience. Surprisingly, Father Mapple has nothing to say regarding the last two chapters of the book, a suggestion that men should be rewarded for their obedience to God’s commands. He ignores the Jonah of chapters 1 and 2, the man who is angered by God’s decision to spare the people of Nineveh, despite sending Jonah to warn them of their destruction. The latter Jonah begrudges God for his curious actions and questions his intentions and treatment of man. Father Mapple suggests that men should accept their divinely-imposed fates and follow God’s law without question. His sermon proves to be a prophecy of the journey Ishmael and Queequeg will take with Captain Ahab at the helm. However, there is little room for Father Mapple’s Christianity on the Pequod. It soon becomes evident that life on a whaling ship takes on a religion of its own. This religion supersedes the base religion of each man who boards the ship. Often times, a man must question or even sacrifice his personal convictions in order to contend with the demands of the religion of the sea.

Not only is Captain Ahab angry like Jonah, he questions God’s actions and intentions like Job. Like Job, he assumes that the sum of things must follow some humanly intelligible system and demands to know what the system is. He is described as a “grand, ungodly, god-like man, chasing with curses a Job’s whale round the world,” an early indicator of his struggle with the divine (Melville 156). He is “god-like” because he creates his own perception of the world, but “ungodly” because he refuses to submit to forces beyond his control. Having been at sea for forty years, Captain Ahab is the ideal Romantic hero; while Charles Darwin has yet to publish his Origin of the Species, Captain Ahab certainly sees the world at sea as a “Survival of the Fittest.” Alienated from the comforts of traditional religiosity, he is finely tuned to nature and its effects on the human mind. He has seen the laws of nature defy the laws of God, and he has come to define the all-knowing creator as a malevolent force. It is no surprise that Captain Ahab chooses to unleash his internal battle with the spiritual unknown on nature's leviathan, the elusive white whale that took his own leg out from under him. In both philosophy and at sea, Captain Ahab chooses to combat that which limits his intelligence and ability to create his own destiny.

Beginning with his soliloquy in Chapter 36, “The Quarter-Deck,” Captain Ahab contends that God is, in fact, a malevolent agency. He strives to defy limitations placed on human beings by conventional morality and religion, questioning God's right to have such complete control over his subjects. Captain Ahab concludes that God has been cruel to man, and that he, too, must answer to someone for his sins. It is also in “The Quarter-Deck” that Captain Ahab reveals to his crew that his mission is about more than just enacting revenge on the white whale for the loss of his leg. Like Ishmael, Captain Ahab looks for hidden realities in everything around him, and like Job, he wishes to confront God, but cannot locate him physically to do so. After Moby Dick almost premeditatedly bites off his leg, Captain Ahab projects all of his perceptions regarding evil in the world onto the whale that attacked him. Comparing the whale to a wall shoved against him, he complains that “That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him” (Melville 138-139). Captain Ahab finds a commonality between the unknowable God and the elusive white whale, and he transfers his anger of the first onto the latter, which is, in his view, possibly more tangible and combatable.

Imagining himself as the representative of his race before God, Captain Ahab sees himself as a sort of martyr, as Adam “staggering beneath the piled centuries since Paradise” (Melville 427). His death is not suicide, but a sacrifice in judgment of God himself. Captain Ahab surrenders his ship, his crew, and his own life in defiance of the great unknowable, proudly hailing the endurance of humanity until the very end. His death gives his life purpose, and because he has died in commitment of a struggle he cannot win, his tale becomes legendary. By pitting himself against fate and its initiator, Captain Ahab becomes a sort of god of the godless. He becomes a hero to those who share his curiosity of the divine, and whose thirsty minds fail to settle for limited knowledge and control regarding their fates.

While Captain Ahab reflects questioning Job, he is most definitely not patient with God. Job persists in pursuing wisdom by fearing God and avoiding evil, but Captain Ahab pursues wisdom by confronting God directly and engaging evil as necessary along the way. In the biblical account, God humbles Job by shouting rhetorical questions from a whirlwind, pointing out how little Job actually knows about creation and his almighty power. God actually cites his creation of the leviathan as a great wonder unknown to man. Overwhelmed, Job acknowledges the limitations of human knowledge and submits to God’s supreme authority. Captain Ahab does not bow down to omnipotence, and therefore, has the greater integrity.

Ishmael more closely resembles patient, rational faces of Job and Jonah. He tolerates the absurdity of Captain Ahab's conviction, recognizing that many cultures believe in malignant forces in the world. Despite the outrageousness of Captain Ahab's quest for vengeance, Ishmael sympathizes with his disdain for the omnipotent God. He articulates Captain Ahab's torment well, and even justifies his transference of anger from God to the whale:

That intangible malignity … Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred White Whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All that most maddens and torments … all truth with malice in it … all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it (Melville 154).

However, Ishmael is more rational than Captain Ahab, and patient with God because he, like Job, recognizes the incomprehensible wonder of the universe. In both the book of Job and in Moby-Dick, the leviathan serves as an example of the divine creativity that fascinates Job and Ishmael. Ishmael tirelessly explores the whale’s physiology and idiosyncrasies, but continues to find him just as elusive, although ubiquitous, as when he began. All of his attempts to define the whale through art, science, folklore and myth are in vain, and he is left with the terrifying image of the whale’s whiteness, the “colorless all-color of atheism” (Melville 164). Neither Job nor Ishmael believe it is possible to know the magical underpinnings of the universe, however, they both pursue knowledge anyway. In the end, Ishmael is rewarded for his Job-like patience, and is expelled from the sea like Jonah is from the whale’s belly.

Through allusions to the biblical books of Job and Jonah, Melville presents a number of approaches to dealing with the imperfections that God has bestowed upon men. Father Mapple would recommend that men should, like patient Job and obedient Jonah of chapters 1 and 2, bow down before God and accept the path he has chosen for them. Captain Ahab, like angry Jonah of chapters 3 and 4, represents men who choose to defy God and protest their inferior creation, insisting that every man has a right to control his own destiny. Ishmael’s ideology is a mixture of these temperaments. Like Job, he questions God’s actions and is enthralled by his unknowable majesty. Like Jonah, he attempts to flee from one unsatisfying fate only to be delivered another. One of the first things we learn about Ishmael is that he is going to sea as a sort of self-annihilation, as an alternative to “throw[ing] himself upon the sword” (Melville 14). Jonah runs from God’s command to inform the people of Nineveh of their destruction, and is subsequently swallowed up and held captive in the belly of a whale. Ishmael runs from his dreary life on land and finds himself embroiled in an epic battle between good and evil, steered toward certain death by a monomaniacal captain determined to eliminate God or sacrifice himself and his crew while trying. In the end, Job, Jonah and Ishmael are all rewarded for their obedience to and patience with God. Captain Ahab dies “angry, even unto death,” like the Jonah that Father Mapple so purposefully leaves out of his sermon.

Ishmael’s redemption could be said to derive from his relationship with Queequeg, the pagan cannibal who accompanies him on the journey. From the very beginning of the novel, Ishmael and Queequeg form a relationship that transcends each man’s religious convictions. They ignore ritual and tradition as necessary in order to maintain their companionship. Queequeg goes through one of the most interesting religious transformations of all of the characters in Moby-Dick. Despite being assumed an evil savage, Queequeg has several acknowledgements of the divine laws of love and humanity. First, he saves an overboard bumpkin on the New Bedford schooner. Later, he spares Ishmael as well as Tashtego, who falls into the vast pit of a dead sperm whale’s head. Finally, it is his coffin, which he prepares during his own sickness, that keeps Ishmael afloat after the ultimate battle. Queequeg’s love redeems Ishmael from the fatal isolation that had led him to set sail with Captain Ahab and throw away all remnants of his former self. Melville’s ultimate commentary might be that mortal endurance in a world where men are imperfect and have limited understanding is not possible without love. Regardless of the approach to one’s relationship with God, one’s relationships with people are most meaningful. The novel’s final image of Tashtego relentlessly hammering the flag to the ship as it sinks signifies the crew's loyalty to their captain's purpose and, to a greater extent, the enduring spirit of humanity in the face of that which it cannot control.

Captain Ahab, a deep-thinking philosopher and man more tuned to nature than civilization, finds limitations in both God and in the white whale he hunts. Like Job, he is angry with the omnipotent creator because he built man with the capacity to learn, but not with the ability to understand God Himself or the great mystical underpinnings of the universe. He rejects Father Mapple's assertion that people should blindly accept their fate, as it has already been written by God and cannot be altered on earth. Having lived at sea for much of his life, Captain Ahab has come to regard only himself as the author of his destiny. He perceives the world, not through God, but through nature, and because the white whale is the only beast in the sea he cannot control, he compares it to the lack of control men have over their own lives when they blindly follow fate. Captain Ahab's crusade against Moby Dick is a crusade against God himself. Captain Ahab and his crew of miscreants die in defiance of man's limited knowledge, declaring that, from this point forward, men will create their own destinies. Melville's Moby-Dick, then, becomes the holy doctrine of men who cannot accept religious determinism, and Captain Ahab becomes a god of the godless and a hero to the disillusioned.

Works Cited

The Bible: Authorized King James Version. NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick. New York: Dover, 2003. Print.

The Evolution of Language: Sacrificing Meaning

Language has been evolving for thousands of years, and that is precisely the problem modern biblical scholars face when analyzing various sources of ancient, scriptural text. During the difficult task of translating, the translator must match up each foreign word with its native counterpart, ensuring that the exact literal meaning of the concept is not distorted in the process. A quick glance across a variety of modern English Bibles (the Authorized King James Version, William Tyndale's Pentateuch, the Geneva Bible, and the Douay-Rheims Bible) indicates that this is not a simple task. As evidenced by varying word choice within these Bibles, modern English correlates were often simply unavailable for ancient words and concepts. The translators composing these Bibles were tasked with the the duty of conveying the meaning behind the original word in the face of a changing linguistic landscape. Sometimes, they relied upon words that were popular in (and perhaps particular to) their native vernacular, to better familiarize the audience with archaic concepts. They also varied in word choice when attempting to convey fantastical or supernatural occurrences within the text. In this capacity, word choice can be a powerful literary device, as it can help convey tropological, historical, literal, anagogical, and sometimes, contemporary meaning. While translators have an important duty to preserve the integrity of the ancient word, they also possess the power to distort it by interjecting words colored with their own personal biases.

A close look at Genesis chapters 6 and 7 in each of the aforementioned English Bibles garners a handful of passages that include word variation. The first most remarkable instance of variation occurs in verse 4, with the description of “giants,” the progeny of “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men.” While the Authorized Version and the Geneva Bible both maintain the use of the word “giants,” Tyndale changes the word to “tyrants,” and in the Douay-Rheims Bible, the creatures are referred to as “devils.” The Authorized Version and the Geneva Bible's literal use of the word “giants” leaves room for interpretation amongst readers. A “giant” could either be “a legendary humanlike being of great stature and strength,” “a living being of great size,” “a person of extraordinary powers,” or “something (or someone) unusually large or powerful.”1 Tyndale, with the inclusion of the word “tyrant,” indicates a historical, political, or even tropological meaning behind the corruption that came unto the earth. Such a choice is reflective of Tyndale's own political ideology; he was an advocate for the common people and fought against their oppression by a “tyrannical” church. The Douay-Rheims Bible, on the other hand, refers to the “giants” as “devils,” a more anagogical interpretation than the other three texts offer. In the Annotations of the Douay-Rheims version, these “devils” are identified as a distinct species from man, and were “the most insolent, lascivious, covetous, cruel, and in all kind of vices impious” (23). The translators of this Bible decided to offer their readers a more spiritual interpretation that might better convey the wickedness of the creatures that corrupted the earth and brought about an apocalyptic flood. Since “giants” are fantastical creatures with which human beings are unfamiliar, translators have struggled with offering their audiences words that make the supernatural concept easier to comprehend. Sometimes, new meaning accompanies the new word choice.

The next instance of word variation takes place between verses 5 and 13, which detail the corruption of mankind on the earth. Where the Authorized Version refers to the “wickedness” of men and “violence” throughout the earth, Tyndale uses the words “wickedness” and “mischief.” Instead of “violence” or “mischief,” the Geneva Bible says that the earth was filled with “cruelty.” The Douay-Rheims edition deviates the furthest from the Authorized Version. In it, men are full of “malice” and the earth is full of “iniquity.” Despite their differences, all versions claim that the “hearts” of men were filled with “evil.” This is one instance in which it would be very beneficial to have access to the most antiquated version of the scripture as possible. The word variations here seem to serve contemporary purposes only. The translators were more than likely experimenting with the rapidly changing vernacular, attempting to see if one particular word would convey the appropriate meaning better than another. The words translators selected were likely more popular (or simply more colorful) and their definitions more precise than the general, bland terms of “wickedness” and “violence.” A closer look at the Hebrew word used in the original scripture would yield any other significance the variation of word choice might indicate.

Finally, another significant incidence of word play exists in verse 9, in the explanation for why Noah and his family were spared from the flood. Both the Authorized Version and the Douay-Rheims Bible say Noah was “perfect in his generations.” Tyndale refers to Noah as “righteous,” while the Geneva Bible say he is “upright.” The use of the word “perfect” in the Authorized and Douay-Rheims versions indicates that Noah was “entirely without fault or defect”2, a flawless specimen of man. The word “upright” was used as early as the 12th century and indicated one who is “marked by strong moral rectitude.”3 The word “righteous,” however, did not appear in the English language until 1530, the same year that Tyndale's translation emerged.4 The avoidance of the word “perfect” in reference to Noah could either be a device to make readers feel adequate and worthy of God's praise despite their moral shortcomings, or a foreshadowing of the imperfection that Noah would display after the flood. The words “righteous” and “upright” both indicate active participation on behalf of the individual, whereas the word “perfect” could suggest that the individual was created without flaws and thereby existed flawlessly by the will of God. The distinctions between the words “perfect,” “righteous” and “upright” may be minor, but they highlight, once again, the translator's difficult task of choosing the appropriate word for both historical and spiritual accuracy, in a context that preserves the text's authenticity while imparting a contemporary correlate for readers to comprehend.

The complexity of translating ancient texts is outlined in the Introduction of the Authorized Version. It points out that even many of the Hebrew texts included in the Old Testament were written as “hostile commentary” to earlier sacred texts from places like Canaan, Mesopotamia and Egypt (xxi). In other words, not only was the Bible written about people from another time, another culture and another language, it was created as a response to a time, culture, and language even further removed. It is no surprise that modern English translators – and to an even greater extent, the modern English audience – have difficulty reading and understanding the ancient, foreign concepts presented in the text. The Introduction explains that “it is not an aberration but actually a recurring characteristic of the Bible that it is written in a language at some remove from that actually spoken by its readers” (xxiii). By the time the New Testament was written, Hebrew itself was an archaic language. Today, most English translators work with the Latin Vulgate; Latin, too, is now a classical language. After the messy attempt by many translators to employ a contemporary vernacular in their editions, the language of the Authorized Version became “deliberately archaic and Latinized” (xxviii). Because of its adherence to an earlier, more authentic version of the ancient scriptures, the Authorized Version becomes perhaps the most reliable biblical source available in the English language.

1. "giants." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online. 11 May 2010. Web.
2. "perfect." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online. 11 May 2010. Web.
3. "upright." Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online. 11 May 2010. Web.
4. “righteous.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2010. Merriam-Webster Online. 11 May 2010. Web.

Works Cited

Genesis. The Bible: Authorized King James Version. NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Genesis. The Douay-Rheims Bible. Ed. Laurence Kellam. The English College of Douay, 1609. Print.

Genesis. The Geneva Bible. Geneva, 1560. Print.

Genesis. Tyndale's Old Testament. Ed. David Daniell. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1530. Print.

Introduction. The Bible: Authorized King James Version. NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.

Perpetual Transition and Crossing Boundaries in Edwidge Danticat's Breath, Eyes, Memory

In the Introduction to her book, Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject, Carole Boyce Davies discusses Black female specificity, or the concept that a Black woman not only faces oppression for her skin color, but also for being a female. She says, “For it is the additional identity of femaleness which interferes with seamless Black identity and is therefore either ignored, erased or 'spoken for'” (6). Davies later claims that Black women are in a state of “perpetual transition,” consistently crossing boundaries between “cultures, identities, sexualities, classes, geographies, races, genders and so on …” (16) In the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, Edwidge Danticat tells the story of a Haitian-born woman crossing multiple boundaries to better understand, celebrate, and sometimes, challenge what it means to be Haitian as well as woman. Sophie, Danticat's protagonist, crosses physical boundaries by traveling back and forth between Haiti and the United States. The novel explores the concept of “doubling,” and dualities abound throughout the text. Symmetry, cycles of repetition, and the blurring of boundaries help Danticat illustrate both the “perpetual transition” of Haitian women, as well as their Black female specificity and multiple sources of oppression. Most specifically, Sophie crosses boundaries three ways: spiritually, culturally and politically. To confront and accept her unique position as a woman of multiple subjectivities, she must challenge the spiritual, cultural and political shackles that bind her.

A result of European colonialism, Haiti fosters a patriarchal mindset and, historically, those in power have used religion as a weapon for thought control. The Caco women have internalized this mindset, and now subscribe, most adamantly, to what Sophie calls a “virginity cult,” where mothers physically test the sexual integrity of their daughters (154). The Virgin Mary is referred to often throughout the text, signifying her importance to the Caco women. Sophie actually recites the Virgin Mother's Prayer as her mother tests her for the first time. Since Martine was raped and impregnated with Sophie, Sophie has a “Madonna image” of her mother. She finds it hard to imagine her mother sexually. Sophie begins her transformation by recognizing the trauma testing brings to Haitian women. Tante Atie describes Haitian mothers' treatment of their daughters:

They train you to find a husband … They poke at your panties in the middle of the night, to see if you are still whole. They listen when you pee, to find out if you're peeing too loud. If you pee loud, it means you've got big spaces between your legs (136-137).

Sophie refers to the testing as “humiliation” (123). Despite religious customs or conventions, she ends the practice by taking her own virginity with a pestle. Even though she does not participate in sexual relations with a man, she dismantles her chastity, breaking her bond to the Virgin Mary. It is important to note that in addition to joining a sexual phobia group to deal with her trauma, Sophie also visits a therapist, who is an initiated Santeria priestess. The fact that a religious woman offers Sophie an avenue to heal herself indicates that challenging the trauma caused by testing is not blasphemous. Once Sophie learns that her mother is pregnant out of wedlock, the Madonna image is shattered. After Martine kills herself, Sophie dresses her for her funeral from head to toe in bright red, calling her a “Jezebel, hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them” (227). Sophie has abandoned her Virgin Mary mentality for one that puts women in control. No longer will she allow spiritual conventions to control her sexuality.

Sophie not only crosses spiritual boundaries, she traverses between cultures as well. Danticat illuminates a culture that had become infiltrated by the violent and bloody Tontons Macoutes, the personal security force of Haitian dictator FranVois Duvalier. Haiti's brutal history is that of a culture controlled by aggressive forces that work to keep particular individuals in a particular place. The Haitian culture is one that fosters the subjugation of women unto men, and that links women directly to the domestic space. According to Sophie, in Haiti, “nightmares are passed on through generations like heirlooms” (234). These nightmares manifest themselves in the form of stories, like the tale about “the girl who wished she could marry a star and then went up there and, as real as her eyes were black, the man she wished for was a monster” (164). These stories serve to keep women in their domestic space, to deter them from dreaming about crossing boundaries. Sophie's grandmother, Ife, tells a story about a lark who tries to steal a little girl's heart. The little girl in the story represents Sophie, and the lark represents opportunity. It is opportunity that threatens to take Sophie away from her mothers and her motherland. Ife interprets Sophie's return to Haiti as a denial of opportunity in America, and the embracing of her native roots. However, she soon learns that her granddaughter has returned home with a “greater need to understand” the purpose of the testing practice (170). Eventually, Sophie realizes she sympathizes with her mother, who has her own nightmares to deal with, and recognizes their individual pain as “links in a long chain” (203). Sophie divorces herself from her mother and the culture of her motherland first by deflowering herself with the pestle. She then marries Joseph, a man from a culture other than her own. She chooses education as an avenue out of poverty, even though the women in her family have traditionally avoided literacy. Sophie crosses cultural boundaries many different ways. Her journey is recorded in the name of her daughter, Brigitte Ife Woods, which reflects Sophie's encounters with multiple cultures.

A more subtle hurdle for Sophie exists in the political arena. She must cope with the political control the Tontons Macoutes have on the men and women of Haiti. She must also address her female specificity, which is dominated by men in both the old and new cultures to which she belongs. Sophie says that to her, “men were as mysterious … as white people” (67). Most men get wrapped up in the violence of the culture or lose “their sense of obligation to the family's honor,” and therefore, are simply not around to support the women of Haiti. Still, the culture awards greater political advantage to males. For example, as illustrated in the novel, when a baby boy is born, a light shines outside of the birthing house. If a baby girl is born, the light is extinguished for the mother to sit alone in the darkness with her new daughter (146). Additionally, Tante Atie says that the men in Haiti “insist that their women are virgins and have ten fingers” (151). Ife tells Sophie that it was her duty to keep her daughters chaste until they were ready for marriage. A woman's purity would directly reflect the honor of her husband. Sophie tells the story of a man who chose a virgin to marry, and on their wedding night, cuts her to make her bleed in order to defend his honor. The woman dies and the man parades around showing off sheets stained with her blood (155). Sophie also tells the story of a woman who had blood pouring out of her skin, so she asks Erzulie to change her into a butterfly so she will never bleed again. Ironically, even though butterflies do not suffer as women do, they also don't live very long lives. Martine becomes Sophie's butterfly, and exchanges her womanly suffering for a shortened life span. Sophie addresses her frustration with Haitian politics and female inequality by attacking the cane in the field where her mother was raped. By attacking the cane, she is battling against her mother's perpetrator, the Tontons Macoutes, and men in general. After Martine's funeral, Sophie will return to her new home in America to Joseph, the husband who, although he is not Haitian, utilizes his authority as a male to place domestic and sexual demands on his wife. Sophie must continue her “perpetual transition” as a Haitian-American woman, and now turn her efforts to demanding equality in a new political realm.

Danticat's tale verifies Davies' claims about Black women's migrating subjectivities. Sophie crosses one boundary after the next in order to embrace, celebrate and redefine what it means to be both a product of multiple cultures and a woman. She defies religious conventions to take control of her sexuality. She distances herself from harmful practices associated with her native culture. Finally, she begins to confront the political forces that have created the entire cycle of trauma the women of Haiti have been subject to. Because she has the power to evaluate and change her life, Sophie becomes a powerful figure for other boundary-crossing women who share in the “perpetual transition” of Black femininity.


Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.

Davies, Carole Boyce. “Introduction: Migratory Subjectivities: Black Women's Writing and the Renegotiation of Identities.” Black Women, Writing and Identity: Migrations of the Subject. New York.