Traditional Practices in Breath, Eyes, Memory- Edwidge Danticat

Edwige Danticat's novel Breath, Eyes, Memory explores the importance of spirituality in
Haiti, and the spectrum of beliefs in the supernatural that is manifest there. Vaudou has
been historically widespread in Haiti, yet its existence has been, with some periods of
exception, a subtle underline of Haitian culture and society rather than an immanent
presence. Danticat's faint emphasis on elements of the supernatural and the religious in
Haitian life reflects the people's nonchalant understanding and the routine of living a life
affected by spiritual belief and practice.

Danticat has said that "everything is a metaphor or proverb" in Haiti, so naturally Breath,
Eyes, Memory contains many Haitian myths, legends, and folk tales, spoken from the
mouths of Haitian women characters. Metaphors are themselves language's magical tools
that have the power to transform the actual into a symbol. Religion and the supernatural
are components of all fairytales and folklore, and Haiti's tradition of storytelling
emphasizes the was of vaudou. Mythology, folklore and ritual mesh with the variety of
religion, and become part of the "hybrid".

The fairytale of the Tonton Macoute, a scarecrow with human flesh, is one of the many
legends that mothers tell their children to "both thrill and terrify them." The real Tonton
Macoutes, feared renegade policemen of the dictatorship, haunt the Haitian people
through their merciless enforcement of power and unpredictable use of violence. The
Macoutes are a reverse metaphor, in that they are the real entity that represents the
imagined one; they are named after the bogeyman from children's stories. Their
emergence from the stories into reality is a case of a symbol becoming manifest.
Like the Catholic saints immortalized by canonization and the vaudou lwas represented
by the images of saints, the Macoutes are interchangeable with and indistinguishable
from the monster of the country's collective imagination. Sophie and Martine both
suspect that Martine's rapist and Sophie's father was a Macoute. Martine's memory of her
rape is something inescapable. She relives it through her dreams every night where
violence becomes her own bogeyman. Sophie especially fears the Macoutes, because she
is half Macoute herself. She has the blood of a Macoute--both monster and thug--and
probably even looks like the one who was her father.

Blood as a symbol of purity and renewal is a recurring image in Danticat's story. Blood is
also an important symbol in religion. Sophie recounts the story of the woman from whose
unbroken skin blood flowed. She turns to the goddess Erzulie for help. The woman, in
order to stop her bleeding, must choose to become a plant or animal, as Erzulie cannot
help her unless she commits to change. The woman chooses to become a butterfly, a
symbol of the transformed.

In this story, where an extreme transformation follows an intense flow of blood, a woman
escapes her torment by undergoing a change of identity, ability, and expectation. Danticat
precedes Sophie's use of the pestle to break her hymen with this folk tale. When Sophie
destroys her "maidenhood", it is an "act of freedom" from which blood flows heavily,
leaving her damaged from her mother's perspective, but free, momentarily, from her own.
Similarly, Martine's suicide is a scene where her blood stains white sheets, and her
transformation is the most severe of all--from living to deceased. In Sophie's youth
Martine sought to protect her from being bloodied by penetration, which would ruin her
prospects for a respectable marriage and thereby change her life. It is ironic that Martine
ends her own life with a bloody, self-inflicted penetration years after Sophie's
self-inflicted wound thrust her into life as an adult.
In both cases, the act of freeing oneself--however destructive the route--requires
bloodshed. In Catholicism, it is the blood of Christ that cleanses the spirits of believers.
Vaudou has a similar aspect of cleansing through blood, whereby being "washed in
blood" and offering "blood sacrifice" are rituals meant to renew. Animal sacrifice releases
life, which the lwas may consume. Outside of a religious purpose, Martine offers herself
as her own sacrifice by releasing her life. Sophie hopes her own bloodshed will release
her from the "tests".

Sophie and Martine both use the vaudou notion of "doubling" to overcome pain in their
lives, particularly the pain of being penetrated. Sophie doubles (transports her mind to a
more pleasant place with memory and imagination) when she is tested by her mother and,
later, when the act of intercourse with her husband becomes a test of its own, of her
dutifulness. In another way that Martine's life reflects Sophie's, Martine's trauma causes
her to need the practice of doubling as well. Grandmother Ifé explains that the disgrace of
a daughter disgraces her mother; in the same tradition of projecting one's experience onto
another, it seems, Martine's painful life pains the life of Sophie. Sophie explains doubling
in terms of the wicked, political use by would be preternatural, "part flesh, part shadow"
leaders, who doubled to enable themselves to "murder and rape so many people and still
go home to play with their children and make love to their wives," whereas her own
doubling, and her ancestors' long history thereof, is innocent.

Sophie insists to Grandmother Ifé that one cannot "get used to" the testing, and that it is
the most horrible thing that she's ever experienced. Ifé's religious adherence to social
rules about purity, chasteness, and familial honor keep her from fully understanding the
humiliation Sophie feels, even though Ifé underwent testing herself. The testing has
religious significance-a woman's "purity" is important across many cultures and belief
systems, where unlike the blood of redemption and salvation, the blood of lost virginity is
a stain of sin on an unmarried woman. Sophie sleeps with a statue of Erzulie that Ifé
gives her. The statue is a symbol of conflict between the desire for purity and the joy of
fertility, as Erzulie is a goddess of nature-which includes growth, fertility and
decay-ironically represented by the symbol of holy purity, the Blessed Virgin. Erzulie is a
contradiction which all the women of Breath, Eyes, Memory can neither fully understand
nor escape.

A large part of vaudou's focus is on the healing of its practitioners. Bloodletting and the
use of leeches have their origins elsewhere, but in Tante Atie's present using leeches to
suck the blood from the lump in her calf is thought of as a legitimate medical practice as
well as a symbolic ritual. "It's only blood, bad blood at that," she tells Sophie. Again, the
loss of blood is required to release both physical ailments and spiritual hindrance from
"bad blood."

When Sophie seeks psychological help, she turns to a supernatural authority--a Santeria
priestess--for therapy. The priestess suggests an exorcism for Martine to release her from
the possession-like trauma of her past and her haunting pregnancy. Martine claims the
fetus whispers things to her from the womb. The voice of Martine's pregnancy, like her
recurring nightmare, is intangible but very real. In the climax of vaudou rituals,
participants allow themselves to be "mounted" by the lwas, a desired effect of worship
and offering that is like spiritual possession.

However, throughout the novel Martine is presented as a sacrificial figure whose

possessions by loneliness, trauma, disease, pregnancy, and a strained relationship with her
daughter are anything but desirable. Like Erzulie, Martine is rife with contradictions as
enforcer of virginity and sexual, fertile being. Martine is aware of her own conflicting
positions which torment her further. To the priestess, Martine's tortures are symptoms of
demons. In Haitian folklore, they are a sign that, as the story goes, God has given her "a
piece of the sky to carry on her head."

Sophie, too, has her own bit of sky to carry. At the time of Sophie's marriage, she looks
forward to moving to a place called "Providence" because she believes in its literal
meaning--direction from God. Providence was established hundreds of years ago as a
refuge for those persecuted for their religious beliefs, and Sophie's attraction to it stems
from her own feelings of persecution caused by her dissention from the religious-like
traditions of chastity and "testing". Grandmother Ifé dreams of "Guinea", a symbol for
paradise, and Sophie dreams of her own "Guinea" in Providence.

For the people of Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora there is an ever-present spiritual
undertone in their lives. The permeating religious experience for Haitians, like all
religious experience, is a search for hope through faith, tradition, and ritual. The religious
search, however, raises questions and doubts, and exposes contradictions. Breath, Eyes,
Memory brings Haiti's rich hybrid of spiritual belief and practice to the page, and
represents it authentically in the lives of characters that exist across borders, where in
both reality and super-reality, good and evil can never outweigh one another.

*I use the spelling "voudou" instead of "voodoo", "vodon", or other variations for no
other reason than because Danticat does.
For the People of Haiti and the Haitian Diaspora there is an ever-present spiritual
undertone in their lives. The permeating religious experience for Haitians, like all
religious experience, is a search for hope through faith, tradition, and ritual. The religious
search, however, raises questions and doubts, and exposes contradictions. Breath, Eyes,
Memory brings Haiti's rich hybrid of spiritual belief and practice to the page, and
represents it authentically in the lives of characters that exist across borders, where in
both reality and super-reality, good and evil can never outweigh one another.

*I use the spelling "voudou" instead of "voodoo", "vodon", or other variations for no other reason than because
Danticat does.

© 2003.chadofborg@yahoo.com