Cereus Blooms At Night
By Shani Mootoo
Outline
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Shani Mootoo
Cereus Blooms at Night
Flashback: Mala’s affection toward Ambrose
Name—identity—memory
Magic of Nature– frangipani, cereus
Contradictory feeling
The ending
Shani Mootoo
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born in Ireland in 1958 and raised in Trinidad.
Moved to Canada at the age of 19.
A skilled multimedia artist and filmmaker.
Finally acknowledging and naming her experience
of abuse prompted Mootoo to return to words,
and write her first collection of short stories.
• Out on Main Street, published in 1993, is a
collection of short stories.
• Cereus Blooms at Night, published in 1996, is her
first novel.
Cereus Blooms at Night
• Cereus Blooms at Night, Shani Mootoo’s 1996
novel, is set in the town of Paradise on the
imaginary Caribbean island Lantanacamara.
Colonized by the “Shivering Northern Wetlands”
(Vivian M. May 107)
• In setting the novel on a fictional, nonspecific
Caribbean island, rather than on Trinidad where
she grew up, Mootoo follows in the footsteps of
other Caribbean women writers who have found
a critical utility in crafting an imaginary space
from which to remember identities and histories
differently (Vivian M. May 107).
• At the same time, by naming the town Paradise,
and focusing much of the novel on the main
character Mala’s walled garden within Paradise,
Mootoo is clearly toying with cliches of the
Caribbean as a lost Eden, a pastoral idyll (Vivian
M. May 108).
• Thus the fact that much of the story takes place
in a garden in the town of Paradise, with parks
named such things as El Dorado, suggests a novel
that is more allegorical in nature—a commentary
on European exploration narratives and the role
of science and botany in empire (Casteel 2003, 19,
22), a reflection on the politics of sexuality, and
an analysis of exile, displacement, and diaspora.
Mala’s affection toward Ambrose
• Because of Ambrose, Mala sees hopes and
bright side of life. (brightness in darkness)
• Once, when they were in high school . . .
[Ambrose] left a note of his visit in the form of
a stolen stalk of frangipani . . . She remember
the frangipani was in unusually full bloom
these days. It must have been an omen (210).
•  frangipani is the sigh for her. Thinking of
Ambrose makes her endure the painful life.
• She slipped her tongue out of her mouth and
licked the stew on her face. The taste of garlic
and anise erased his smell. The stew was
indeed well seasoned, perhaps the best she
had ever cooked. She was pleased she had
saved some back for Ambrose (222-223).
• Looking forward his visits gave her the
strength to endure her father’s night-time
attacks (226).
• She thought privately of him . . . and of herself
as the lady who would one day be rescued by
him and revealed to all the world as a princess
stolen by the commoners at birth (226).
• Ambrose E. Mohanty stood like a man . . . For
the first time in her life Mala felt like a
woman, a feeling both thrilling and
frightening.
• He had turned into an extraordinarily
handsome man (212).
•  Mala could not bear to look at him and call
him Ambrose.
• She is unconfident to call his name, intending
to keep a distance with him (a kind of respect
to those superior people) for her, she is not as
equal as Ambrose.
• “Pohpoh, you must call me Ambrose. I am the
same person you have known since we were
children. Please accept my present” (213).
• “Not Mr. Ambrose. Ambrose alone is fine. You
do know me. And I only brought it back for
you because I hold you in the highest esteem
and wanted to pay my respects to you in the
spirit that—” (214)
•  It is so touching that Ambrose had not
changed his mind. He is still the boy, Boyie.
• The present from Ambrose: a portable
gramophone
• Does the gramophone connect something
with Mala?
• She pressed her ear to the horn and smiled,
filling once again with the feeling she had had
watching her mother and Aunt Lavinia dance
(225)  memory about her mother and aunt
dancing with the music.
• Gramophone  record the voice as memory.
Magic of Nature
• Nature gives Mala hopes, power to face the
cruel reality and makes her back to memory.
• She remember the frangipani was in unusually
full bloom these days. It must have been an
omen (210).
• Seeing the frangipani  thinking of Ambrose
 feeling warm and sweet in memory.
• The frangipani  representation of Ambrose
• Even in the dark night she could see the
brightness of the frangipani blossoms by the
fence. Her anxiousness to see Ambrose
surprised her (211).
•  Natural magic: frangipani makes her think
of Ambrose and back to the sweet feeling in
her memory about Ambrose. Brightness in
darkness, feeling warm hope in coldness.
• Dizzying scent of cereus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zbzi8XydHQc
• It was one of the brightest moonlit nights . . . she
witnessed the slow dance of huge, white cereus
buds . . . the moonlight reflected off the
blossoms’ pure whiteness and cast a glow over
the yard (144).
• Close to midnight the buds had opened fully. The
smell in Mala’s yard drenched the air and flowed
across town. Neighbours in deep sleep stirred,
suddenly restless. Some were pried awake but
were soon pleasantly besotted by the perfume
and swept back into deep sleep (149).
Contradictory feeling
• Contradiction: her affection to tyrant father &
terrible memory of childhood.
• Complicated feeling of her father and memory
• Tormented and confused by odd feelings of
having betrayed for her father. After all, she
thought, her father had suffered
immeasurably when her mother left them.
•  Think of Ambrose makes her feel she is
cruel to her wounded father.
• I ent go let nobody tief my woman. No man, no
woman, no damn body go tief my property again.
I go kill he, I go kill she, too, if it comes to that, I
go kill meself, too (238).
•  brutality, violence, patriarchy (chauvinism),
self constructiveness
•  strong self destructiveness that is the main
reason why Mala worries about him. Though she
hates what her father did to her and Asha, she
cannot hate this man absolutely cos he is their
father. It is a kind of complicated and
contradictory relationship of father and daughter.
She cannot separate herself from the
relationship.
•  Chandin’s trauma: being colonized
(attempt to forsake his essence to gain more
or be equal as others) but finally found that
his decision leads to the tragedy that he does
not get more but losing his “highest esteem”
thing. What’s worse, his legitimate woman
finally eloped with his beloved woman. He
seems to be betrayed by his wife, his beloved
and the whole society. That is why he cannot
bear to lose more.
• “Asha? Aunt Lavinia? You there? Mama?
Boyie?” she whispered (247).
• After Ambrose left, she whispered helplessly.
Those people she called are from her
memory they might be the origin of her
feeling of warmth and sense of security.
• Though her childhood is not happy, those
people who made her feel secure lets her
recall them again when she is frustrated in
reality. it is a kind of consolation for her to
think of the memory of childhood.
Confusion of self recognition
• “You grow up here and you don’t realize almost
everyone in this place wish they could be
somebody or something else? That is the story of
life. . .” (258)
• Not able to understand someone or to be
understood by someone.
• “I does watch out over the banister and wonder if
who I see is really what I see” (258).
• “self” is distorted by others. It is uncertain for
people to understand it absolutely.
The ending
• Before our visitors arrive I wash her, mildly
rubbing her skin with frangipani petals from
Mr. Hector’s hedge and pay special attention
in dressing her (267).
• On visiting days she wears a garland of snail
shells about her neck or a crown of wreaths
that we wove with feathers and the wings of
expired insects (267).
Works Cited
• Mootoo, Shani. Cereus Blooms at Night.
Toronto: M&S, 2002.
• May, Vivian M. “Trauma in Paradise: Willful
and Strategic Ignorance in Cereus Blooms at
Night.” Hypatia. 21 (2006): 107-135.
• “Shani Mootoo.” Emory University. Web. 17
May. 2010.
<http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Motoo
.html>.