The integrated theme in Stella by EmericBergeaud, the Dew Breaker by Edwin
Struggle for Freedom.
Stella, first published in 1859, is an imaginative retelling of Haiti’s fight for independence from slavery and French colonialism. Set during the years of the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), Stella tells the story of two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who help transform their homeland from the French colony of Saint Dominguez to the independent republic of Haiti. Romulus and Remus are symbolic, they show a new beginning of a new city called Rome (Bergeaud, p.50). The two names show division, differences and disparities between the two.
The brothers quarreled over the location of the foundation of their new city; Romulus wished to start the city on the Palatine Hill, while Remus wished to found it on the Aventine Hill. In order to settle their disagreement, they agreed to consult augury; augury is a type of prophecy in which birds are examined and observed to determine what actions or persons the gods favor. Each brother prepared a sacred space on their respective hills and began to watch for birds. Remus claimed to have seen six birds, while Romulus said he saw twelve birds (Bergeaud, p.60). Romulus asserted that he was the clear winner by six birds, but Remus argued that since he saw his six birds first, he had won. The brothers remained at a standstill and continued to quarrel until Romulus began to dig trenches and build walls around his hill: the Palatine Hill. In response to Romulus’ construction, Remus made continuous fun of the wall and his brother’s city. Remus was so bold as to jump over Romulus’ wall jestingly. In response to Remus’ mockeries and for jumping over his wall, Romulus, angered by his brother’s belittlement, killed him. Inspired by the sacrifice of their African mother Marie and Stella, the spirit of Liberty, Romulus and Remus must learn to work together to found a new country based on the principles of freedom and equality (Castro, p.236). This new translation and critical edition of Émeric Bergeaud’s allegorical novel makes Stella available to English-speaking audiences for the first time.
Considered the first novel written by a Haitian, Stella tells of the devastation and deprivation that colonialism and slavery wrought upon Bergeaud’s homeland. Unique among nineteenth-century accounts, Stella gives a pro-Haitian version of the Haitian Revolution, a bloody but just struggle that emancipated a people, and it charges future generations with remembering the sacrifices and glory of their victory. Bergeaud’s novel demonstrates that the Haitians not the French are the true inheritors of the French Revolution, and that Haiti is the realization of its republican ideals (Bergeaud, p.58). At a time in which Haitian Studies is becoming increasingly important within the English-speaking world, this edition calls attention to the rich though under-examined world of nineteenth-century Haiti. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
The young family, captive in Saint-Dominguez, was made up of a mother and her two sons, still adolescents. By some peculiarity or picturesque trick of nature, the complexion of the younger son was the hue of faded mahogany, while that of the elder was closer to the shade of darkest ebony. Yet this difference in color did not rule out a certain family resemblance that made them, at first sight, recognizable as brothers. Marie the young mother was black like her older son. She had reached that age where beauty becomes genuine without losing its charms. In a favored land, toward the end of the last century, there lived or better grew, rampantly and humbly in the bosom of a seductive and bounteous nature, a young family that was violently sequestered from humanity(Castro,p.47). The family lived upon a plain, in a poor hut protected by an orange tree. This tree paternally extended its vigorous branches, as if it had taken pity on the flimsy cottage, leaning over to protect it from the wind.
In her second essay “The Other side of the Water”, Danticat explores the difficulties that Haitians encounter when trying to move across borders. So far this semester, we’ve focused on the issues of Caribbean immigrants both domestically and abroad but we hadn’t covered the struggle that immigrants have moving freely. Every movement requires the proper documentation for everything must be accounted for (Bergeaud, p.78). This stringent universal rule isn’t lifted even for the dead apparently. It can’t be pleasant to be stuck in one place, this goes double for those immigrants who travel illegally and are unable to return afterwards.
Moving right along to her novel, “The Dew Breaker”, Danticat by means of largely self-contained chapters discusses the issues faced by several Haitian immigrants as they live life in America. The first chapter stood out as the most poignant dealt with young Ka discovering the true nature of her father when he chucks her statue of him in a lake(Castro,p.125) .Nadine’s story is tragic, she committed an atrocity by the standards of her people and because of this she has been silently tortured. I cannot fathom how traumatizing having an abortion must be but I’d wager that murdering and torturing people under the moniker the “Dew Breaker” would leave much more of an impact.
In The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat, Danticat starts each new chapter with a new story from a different point of view. They show different characters who are affected by poor government and leadership.Even though all these stories are about different situations the characters are still tied together by their connection to the Dew Breaker, Ka’s father. In each of these chapters, the characters are all suffering from some sort of pain with the first chapter where Ka and her father are both in pain (Bergeaud, p.46). Ka’s father does not want to be portrayed as the victim as he is was the one who inflicted pain as well as he is scared that people will recognize him for the terrible things that he did in the past. In trying to avoid his being recognized Ka is hurt greatly by the revelation of the reality of her father’s past and as well as the loss of her piece.
Ka’s father throws out the wood carving of the victim version of him in the water. In Caribbean culture, the soul is thought to go into the sea first to return to the homeland and then after a year go to heaven (Castro, p.34). Even though Ka’s father told Ka that he did not deserve to have his own statue and to be portrayed in such a way, by throwing the statue into the water, the ritual implies his hopes that perhaps he will deserve enough to go to heaven.
All of the characters in The Dew Breaker have difficulty communicating. Ka’s father speaks very cryptically to her; Ka’s mother refrains from socializing with people out of fear that her husband will be discovered. Nadine had an abortion and due to the social stigma behind such procedure, rarely speaks to the people at work as well as her parents (Castro, p.23). Claude, who got deported back to Haiti has trouble understanding Creole, however even though he is having trouble communicating in Haiti, he had the same problem in America. Claude killed his father because he was under the influence of drugs as well as heavily under the influence by the gangs that he hung out him, these factors caused him to lose connection with his home country and communication with his father.
Throughout The Dew Breaker, evil prevails in all its manifestations, particularly in the guise of authority, demanding homage from the persecuted. This novel characters fall into place within the chapters, the infinite connections that bind one life to another clearly drawn.
As the novel begins, a young woman gazes upon her father with eyes of love, unaware of his past. Finally confessing his carefully hidden secret, he is revealed as deeply flawed, his actions virtually unforgivable. The scar he wears on his face carries a terrible history, his life in America built on deception. In his mouth the truth is a lie. Although the father pardons himself, there are many who damn him for the monster of their nightmares (Castro, p.13). Looking through the chapters, we learn of those who have been touched by brutal dictatorship and oppression, where unmarried women bear fatherless children, eking out the most basic existence. Haiti, an island paradise, turns into hell under a despot’s reign of terror, freedom a vague dream, while the hungry scratch for garbage, all under a starlit sky of infinite beauty. Even when these characters find a different life in America, they carry the indelible scars of Haiti .This passionate novel is an assemblage of powerful interrelated stories; here a chorus of voices hums, the heard and the unheard, the “disappeared”, the unborn, the women whose voice boxes have been surgically removed, the desperate murmur of prayers, the eternal silence of the dead and the staccato of random gunfire. There is a staggering contrast between good and evil in The Dew Breaker, as well as the grinding reality of a world made suddenly transcendent in the bright rays of the morning sun. Horrifying, how evil walks so freely through the world, casually touching its victims, then casually strolling into the quiet evening and a peaceful existence, unexposed and unrelenting.
Author Danticat introduces her story of Haitian immigrants and the lives they have escaped in Haiti with the story of Ka, a young sculptress whose parents think of her as a “good angel,” her name also associated symbolically with the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Ka is in Florida with her father to deliver a powerfully rendered sculpture to a Haitian TV actress (Castro,p.46). Ka’s father, who served as the model for the sculpture, however, destroys it, confessing tearfully that he is not the man his daughter has always believed him to be, and admitting that the disfiguring scar on his face was not the result of torture in a Haitian prison. He was “the hunter,” he says, and “not the prey,” one of the “dew breakers,” or torturers, who as part of the Tonton Macoutes, committed political assassinations and inflicted unimaginable tortures on orders of dictators .
In a series of episodes which resemble short stories more than a novel in form, Danticat illuminates the lives of approximately a dozen Haitian immigrants as they remember this traumatic period “back home.” (Bergeaud, p.456)As the “novel” alternates between past and present, it is told from disparate points of view those of Ka’s mother and father, a young man visiting Haiti after ten years to see his blinded aunt, a wedding seamstress in New York, a Haitian-American reporter investigating a possible “dew-breaker,” a man remembering a Haitian friend’s long-ago disappearance as he awaits his son’s birth in New York, and a popular Haitian preacher whose arrest affects lives for many years.
Conclusion
The writers of the two novels apply literature skills while trying to pass their message to the audience. Use of literature skills makes the audience easily get the theme and understand the writer well. In the two novels and the short stories provides highlight the characteristics of the current community. They are trying to depict people’s ways of life and the challenges that they face in day to day activities. For example other novels are discussing on issues of concern in the society such as poor leadership, colonialism and struggle for independence (Castro, p.77). In novel Stella by Emeric Bergeaud the author is against the current status in her country, there is no independence and the characters are suffering slavery, she is also sensitizing people on their rights and ask for their rights and go for their revolution .The other novel is also touching this area of Kas’ father is fighting for independence. From the above discussion we find that different authors have very important ideas that can result to a positive change in the community.
During revolution Totalitarianism is evident in some characters Ka’s father, have been corrupted by participating in the violent acts of a totalitarian regime. Others, like Beatrice, are haunted by the terrors that have been inflicted upon them in the past (Bergeaud,p.120). While many novels about totalitarianism are written as dystopias, portraying the daily life of those under a repressive regime, Danticat’s novel explores the ways in which totalitarianism can be embodied by perpetrators and victims and continue to haunt subsequent generations even after the regime has fallen.
Fatherhood is a metaphor for political leadership in this novel, although Danticat is not necessarily saying that political leaders should be men. Ka’s father in his youth embodies the totalitarian dictator on a smaller scale, and the question is whether he can truly change and become a loving father (Bergeaud,p.90). Ka’s relationships with her father, and her mother’s relationship with Ka’s father, parallel the relationship of the Haitian people to their nation’s government. We see this difficult relationship echoed throughout the novel. Michel, for example, has very mixed feelings about his father, Christophe, and Claude killed his father. Michel has decided to prevent his own son from having such feelings by recording the truth to pass on to his son.
During struggle for independence there is suffering of women Danticat wants us to understand that the suffering of women is common in totalitarian regimes and that these regimes cause significant social fragmentation. Beatrice and Anne, for example, are both bereaved by Haiti’s horrible past. Nadine, meanwhile, is not directly affected by the regime, but she suffers due to the breakup of Haitian community and Haitian families caused by the regime (Castro,p.79). On the other hand, Danticat portrays women as playing a reconstructive role, often in community with one another. Aline and Ka both plan to work to portray the truth. Anne, while traumatized, works for redemption for her husband.
Works Cited
Castro, Anne Margaret. “Caribbean Collusion: Junot Diaz, Edwidge Danticat and the New Yorker Fiction Podcast.” Afro-Hispanic Review 32.2 (2013): 11.
Bergeaud, Emeric, and Christen Mucher. Stella: A Novel of the Haitian Revolution. NYU Press, 201