Mongu 1 Justin Mongu Prof. Acosta LIT 2010 3/19/2021 Essay 2 final draft Essay on novel The relationships between characters is a key driving force in any form of literature and can be used to great effectiveness to portray certain elements of the story to the reader. The novel I will be discussing is “The Dew Breaker” by Edwidge Danticat. It follows multiple characters through multiple stories that are all connected to specific events that occurred in the past in Haiti during a period where the people were terrorized by the king and his military men known as “Miliciens”. This novel is interesting because it is written in way that follows different characters in their own unique stories, many of which where the actions of one character affect the actions of another character in another story. One character in particular is Mr. Bienamé who was particularly influential in the lives of many characters because of his past occupation as a Milicien. There are many interpretations to the theme of the novel. However, the one I will be focusing on is the struggle of forgiveness which is portrayed with the relationships Mr. Bienamé has with the three characters Ka (his daughter), Anne (his wife) and Dany as they have all been wronged by him in one way or another. Mongu 2 Originally Ka and Mr. Bienamé’s relationship is portrayed to be really close. One instance that shows how close they are was when Mr. Bienamé used to read to Ka from one of his favorite books when she was younger, the reader sees this when the author writes: “I had been terribly bored by The Book of the Dead... It had seemed selfish of him not to ask me what I wanted to listen to before going to bed, what I wanted to read and have read to me. But since he’d recovered from the measles and hadn’t died as we’d both feared, I’d vowed to myself to always tolerate, even indulge him, letting him take me places I didn’t enjoy and read me things I cared nothing about, simply to witness the joy they gave him, the kind of bliss that might keep a dying person alive” (Danticat 1). This shows that Ka deeply cares about her father so much that just to see him happy she would spend time with her father, Mr. Bienamé doing things he adored and that she absolutely couldn’t stand or had any interest in whatsoever. In the same way the act of Mr. Bienamé reading something to Ka that he is passionate about shows that he too deeply cares for his daughter. However, a strain was put on their relationship which completely changed how Ka viewed her father and is something that she would struggle to forgive. In the first story “The Book of the Dead” Ka is on a trip with her father to deliver sculpture she made of him to her very first client. But before Ka can get the sculpture to the client he throws it away destroying it and this devastated Ka. Later he said to her that “I do not Deserve a statue” (Danticat 1) he said this to her because of what he did in the past. He confesses to her about his past, he tells her about all the people his hurt and killed, he says “‘This man who cut my face. I shot and killed him, like I killed many people’” (Danticat 1). Ka was stunned by what her father had said. This news coupled with what he had done to her sculpture made it difficult to view her father in the Mongu 3 same adoration as before. Later Ka called her mother to confront her about this new information about her father’s past and asked her, “Manman, how do you love him?” (Danticat 1). This question suggests that Ka did not truly love her father the same way anymore, showing that even though she originally cared deeply for her father she was struggling to forgive him for what he had done in the past. Anne and Mr. Bienamé relation is portrayed as one on love from the beginning. Their affection is evident to the reader when Anne and her husband attend a church service and Anne thinks she sees a criminal from Haiti during the sermon her husband notices this and tries to sing along to the song even though he does not know the words. The author writes that Anne “was moved by this gesture, knowing he was singing only because he knew it was her favorite. He was trying to please her, take her mind off the agitation the man’s presence had caused her” (Danticat 4). The fact that he cared enough about her to try and comfort her shows that their relationship is one of love and trust. However, by the final story in the novel it is fairly clear that Anne is aware of all of her husband’s cruel past deeds, and the reader finds out that one of those deeds was done to a person very close to her in the last story titled, “The Dew Breaker Circa”. He had tortured, shot and killed Anne’s half-brother the pastor. And even with this knowledge Anne still tries to defend her husband when she speaks to Ka who is confronting her on her husband’s secret past by saying, “You and me, we save him. When I meet him, it made him stop hurt the people. This how I see it. He a seed thrown in rock. You, me, we make him take root” (Danticat 1). Despite knowing all that Mr. Bienamé had done and to her own brother no less she still defended him and tried to get Ka to understand that she is a changed man. The act of defending her husband expresses that Anne was able to put the past behind her and forgive him because of the love they share. Mongu 4 The next the relationship is that of Dany and Mr. Bienamé. There isn’t a direct relationship as they do not directly know each other, instead their connection comes from the fact that Mr. Bienamé is responsible for a very tragic and life changing event that happened to Dany as a child. He shot and killed his parents. The author writes about the night in question and how there was an explosion, “His father went out first, followed by his mother. Dany was about to go after them when he heard the shots… He ran out to the yard and called out for his aunt at the top of his lungs. ‘Shut up now or I’ll shoot you too!’ someone was shouting from the street” (Danticat 5). This is the last memory Dany has of his parents: of them being gunned down on the street, his home being burned down, and the man who did it threatening to kill him as well. The man who shot was Mr. Bienamé, he had directly changed his life forever and left him as an orphan, and even though they do not directly know each other their relationship is one of strife caused by Mr. Bienamé’s actions which is something that Dany would obviously struggle to forgive. Many years have passed after Dany’s parents death and he moved to America. We as the readers are told that Dany was looking for a place to stay and had heard about a place belonging to the owner of a barber shop. The author writes, “When he went to the barbershop to ask about the room, he recognized the barber as the man who had waved the gun at him outside his parents’ house” (Danticat 5), the barber is Mr. Bienamé. When Dany saw and recognized him instead of leaving “he took the empty room in the barber’s basement. He couldn’t sleep for months” (Danticat 5), the suspicion of Mr. Bienamé being the one who murdered his parents distressed him so much that he could not sleep. Not only did he live at Mr. Bienamé house but we are also told that “He visited the barbershop regularly for haircuts, arriving early in the morning soon after he opened” (Danticat 5). this tell us that Dany has not forgotten or forgiven Mongu 5 him for killing his parents as he practically stalks Mr. Bienamé, not knowing what to do to him. He does this despite the clear discomfort that comes from being near him as we the reader are told that “His heart would race as the barber draped a black cape over his chest” (Danticat 5). This is emphasizing how fearful Dany is of him. All this exemplifies the struggle Dany is having in forgiving what Mr. Bienamé did to him and his parents. The actions of Mr. Bienamé when he was a Milicien have greatly affected the three characters Ka, Anne and Dany and the relationship that connects each of them to him is one that greatly played on their emotions as they all struggled to forgive and forget the wrongs he did. Each of them have unique struggle as well as different outcomes to the struggle. However their unique relationships do show that forgiveness is something this hard to obtain and give. Mongu 6 Work cited Danticat, Edwidge. “The Dew Breaker”.Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
