The Dew Breaker, written by Edwidge Danticat, is a compelling novel filled with the struggles that many people from Caribbean nations experience upon their migration to other countries. The relationships between the Caribbean families and the changes in the parent generation to the child generation are most notably seen in the scenes with the father’s daughter, Ka. The daughter is a sculpture designer and artist, who creates sculptures and sells them to art enthusiasts. She is the first generation of their family and only child to be born and raised in the city of New York. This also means that she is the first generation to have not lived in her parents’ native country, Haiti. It is interesting to note how she views Haiti due to her parents. In the beginning scene, the daughter is asked for her origins, “I was born and raised in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and have never ever been to my parents’ birthplace. Still, I answer ‘Haiti’ because it is one more thing I’ve always longed to have in common with both my parents” (Danticat 4). This particular thought of hers is very captivating in the sense that as the readers, we can see that she doesn’t have the same connection with her parents’ home country. She wants to feel connected to her parent’s in any way that she can and she wants to connect to her roots and feel like she belongs somewhere.
The daughter has a very delicate relationship with her parents. She doesn’t know much about their past because they refuse to speak about it. The daughter is now used to not asking them any questions when something weird occurs to them, such as when the mother, Anne, tends to hold her breath whenever they pass cemeteries. This is also another reason why the daughter wants to have as many connections as she can with her parents so that she feels that she can relate to them and understand their lives.
The scene in chapter Seven with the wife and the husband is the perfect example of the tendency for Caribbean families to send their loved ones one by one to the United States of America. The husband married the wife and they have been apart for over 7 years. After their marriage, he went to New York City to start working there and so that he could also help her get a Visa to come live in the U.S. with him. When the wife finally gets one, 7 years later, she comes to live in the city with him after so long. Her experiences in the city exemplify the feelings of aloneness and dependency that Caribbean migrants tend to face in the beginning of their excursions around the city. She stays cooped up in the house for most of the week and only has the weekends, when the husband is off from work, to explore the city. This whole chapter shows the sacrifices that Caribbean families tend to make to help their loved ones have a happy life. The wife and the husband sacrificed 7 years of their love marriage so that they could eventually live together in New York City. The husband also works two jobs, both at night and day as a janitor, in two different colleges so that he could send most of the money to the wife when she lived back in their native country.
In Chapter The Book of Miracles, Anne, who is the wife of the father and the mother of Ka, is the typical portrayal of a traditional Caribbean woman. She loves to go to Church and she is very religious. She forces the whole family to go to the mass on Christmas Eve even though the daughter is an atheist, which is very unusual for Caribbean people at the time. The description of the mass attenders also depicts the traditional Caribbean families; they all were religious and wearing dresses, they all said hello to other people even when they didn’t know who they were, and they were very jovial for the holidays. This novel constantly contrasts the typical Caribbean families with the atypical ones of the father, Anne, and Ka.
In Danticat’s essay “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work”, the execution of Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin became a televised event. School children were off from school, parents were off from work, and radio stations were all there to witness the execution of these two rebels, who wanted to overthrow the dictator François Duvalier. Artists and writers tend to become obsessed with certain stories, calling them “creation myths”. In this case, Danticat became enraptured into the story of the execution of two guys who went against the highest authority in that region. Danticat explains the dangerous relationship that both the readers and the authors form to combat the absolute rule of dictators and other unfair authorities. The author has to gain the courage to write about sensitive topics they know would anger the authorities. However, the reader also has to gain the strength to open the book and to delve into its deep depths. Writing for these activist authors is a form of direct disobedience to authorities, known as to create dangerously.
In Danticat’s essay “The Other Side of the Water”, Marius, who is her cousin, was found dead in Miami. After calling his roommate, she found out that he was a party type guy, spending away all the money he earned. He died with only $60 in his pocket and he died from AIDS. Tante Zi, who was the mother of Marius, received her dead son’s body back in their native country and she buried his body. The term “the other side of the water” in Haiti means the eternal afterlife. Tante Zi explains to Danticat that dead people should be buried in their home countries, showing the religious beliefs that Caribbean people tended to have.
