CXC ENGLISH

Hello there! For those of you writing English B, we are still working on Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat, and we have several exercises to help you revise skills you will need for English A. Read on now, and enjoy your CXC page.

Breath, Eyes, Memory

ENGLISH B: Narrative strategies in The Characters: We’ve looked at the story-line of Danticat’s novel and we‘ve met the characters: Grandma Ife; her daughters, Atie and Martine; Sophie, Martine’s daughter; Brigitte, Sophie’s daughter. Then there are the two men in the narrative: Marc (Martine’s boyfriend) and Joseph (Sophie’s husband). Among the minor characters we have Sophie’s counselor and her friends at the therapy group, and the minor male characters would include M. Augustin, Dessalines, Martine’s rapist and the tonton macoutes.

What should strike you is that we have FOUR generations of Haitian women. This is important because Danticat is making the point that mothers have been traumatizing their girl-children with their ‘testing’, and Sophie is determined that the practice must stop so that Brigitte will be free of that burden.

Both Marc and Joseph are loving, caring men, but the introduction of Augustin, Dessalines and the tonton macoutes reminds us of the cruelty that men are capable of: Augustin has abandoned Atie, leaving her to a lonely life, and the tonton macoutes brutally murder Dessalines. Similarly, the man who raped Martine, though not physically in the story, haunts its pages because of how he ruined Martine’s life.

The Structure: Structurally the narrative falls into four parts, following Sophie’s journeying from Haiti to New York to join her mother, her journey back to Haiti to run from the distress she experiences in intimate relationships, the return to New York after a measure of reconciliation with Martine, and then the journey back to Haiti to bury Martine, who has committed suicide. What is the significance of this structuring?

● We see that Sophie and Martine (like so many migrants from the Caribbean) live ‘between two worlds’, trying to reconcile the two cultures and live with their sense of loss.

● We see that Sophie’s journey to psychological well-being requires understanding the ‘virginity cult’ that her mother and grandmother have practiced, forgiving the damage done to her by those who loved her, burying her mother (which symbolizes putting that painful past behind her), and embarking on her journey into the future, determined to provide a different, safer life for her daughter.

● The structuring also provides for Sophie to move from childhood, through adolescence to parenthood. We observe her growing maturity on this journey.

Symbolism: This novel is rich in symbolism. Colours: Martine abandons her preference for yellow, the colour of the foreign daffodils, and turns to red, the colour of tropical flowers, as her favourite colour. Red is also associated with Erzulie—the Haitian goddess who is so unlike the Virgin Mary.

Martine’s doll: The doll Martine has played with and which now takes up too much space in Sophie’s bedroom symbolizes the control Martine wants to have over Sophie, who must be obedient and non-resistant as a doll. The control reaches a peak with the ‘testing’, and Sophie’s declaration of independence is when she ruptures her own hymen.

Breast cancer: The cancer that has caused Martine to have both breasts removed symbolizes the psychological damage that ‘testing’ and the rape have done to her. She rejects her own body now, considering herself ‘diseased’ and less than a woman. Her suicide, too, shows the self-rejection and self-hatred that have taken her over since the rape and testing.

Erzulie (p. 59) Both Roman Catholicism and African Voodoo influence Haitian society. The Virgin Mary, in Catholicism, is praised for her submissive attitude and her sexual purity. Erzulie, the African goddess, in contrast, is celebrated for her power over men: “hot-blooded Erzulie who feared no men, but rather made them her slaves, raped them, and killed them. She was the only woman with that power.’ (p.227)

Erzulie, Sophie tells us, “was the healer of all women and the desire of all men.” (p,59) It is significant that Sophie rejects the virgin image and turns to the hot-blooded Erzulie as her goddess. The ideal woman, for her, is beautiful, strong, a healer of women and nobody’s victim.

CSEC POETRY CDs 2018-2020 syllabus AVAILABLE NOW AT AUSTIN’S BOOK SERVICES or contact Dr Joyce Jonas at 226-9720 Still only $300 each.

SPELLING

Does it end in -TS or –NCE?

Look at the words in this chart. Notice that all the –ts words are PLURAL and refer to PEOPLE, while all the –nce words are SINGULAR and refer to something ABSTRACT.