Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker is an exceptional novel that may seem a bit bewildering at a first glance. The novel is broken up into different chapters, with each chapter seeming as if it was its own story. However, as the readers continue to read each chapter and the numerous stories, we start to realize that each different story with their different characters relate with one another to the other stories mentioned in the different chapters. Danticat has a larger picture that she tries to show by placing us in the numerous shoes of the variety of characters found in The Dew Breaker.
One of the prominent chapters, known as “Monkey Tails”, shows a first person glance of a character living in the area at the time that “Baby Doc”, the president of Haiti, was exiled to France. Michel, who is a little kid at the time, experiences for the first time when his country goes into chaos. Mobs of angry citizens of Haiti form as they go around in search of macoutes, also known as “Dew Breakers”. The macoutes were the torturers of Duvalier’s regime and it was now the time for the community to take their revenge. Michel’s best friend, Romain, has a father who is also a macoute and is on the run from the mobs in the community. Romain decides to flee the country and to start a new life, extending his “monkey tail” to reach newer and better places. Later on in the book, it is made clear that Michel is now the current tenant of Ka’s father, who was a macoute at the time, showing the constant interactions between the Haitian community and that it is hard to escape one’s past.
In another noticeable chapter, titled as “Funeral Singers”, three new characters and their struggles are brought into the novel. Freda used to be a funeral singer in Haiti. However, when she was invited to sing at the national palace, she refused the offer because she blamed the macoutes for killing her father. Mariselle, who is a widow, used to be married to a famous painter. However, her husband painted an unflattering image of the president and thus was killed. She had to escape the country in order to save her life from being in danger. Rezia used to live with her aunt in her aunt’s brothel. One night, Rezia was raped by a macoute and never talked about it to her aunt. When her aunt was dying, the aunt told Rezia that the aunt had allowed the macoute to rape her so that her brothel establishment would not be shut down. Rezia decided to leave the country for good and make a better living in the states. All these girls met each other through a GED class and they all worked hard to get a high school diploma.
The final chapter, which has the most shocking story of all, is all about Ka’s father as the Dew Breaker when he lived in Haiti. The Dew Breaker had a rough childhood, with his mother going insane and their family’s small plot stolen away from them. The Dew Breaker was encouraged to join the macoutes and he gladly did, seeing that they had power and money. He started to enjoy making himself fat, feeling that his power grew as his body did. He used his influence to gain back his family’s plot of land and he was a well-known torturer. Anne was the sister of a prominent preacher, who was provocative in the fact that he went against the president and the macoute’s regime of power. One night, the Dew Breaker received an order to capture the preacher and to take him to one of their torture camps. The preacher is tortured and beaten up there. When the Dew Breaker and the preacher had an encounter with each other, the preacher attacked the Dew Breaker and sliced his face, forming a scar on his face. The Dew Breaker retaliated by shooting the preacher in the chest numerous times. The Dew breaker wasn’t supposed to kill the preacher. In fear for his life, the Dew Breaker ran out of the torture camp and ran into Anne, who was frantically looking for her brother, the preacher. He asked Anne to help him and she does so by nursing his wounds and finally marrying him. They live in the Untied States and have their baby, Ka. The Dew Breaker is constantly repenting for his mistakes of torturing many people. He is always fearful that someone in the Haitian community will recognize him and kill him for once being a macoute. He also lives with the regret of killing his wife’s stepbrother. Even worse than that is the fact that Ka is now disgusted of what her father used to do to people. Ka always believed that her father was the prisoner, not the actual torturer. The Dew Breaker and all the other macoutes who are now living in fear, constantly repent for their sins by living under different aliases within the Haitian community whose members they once tortured.
In Garvey Lundy’s article, “Transnationalism in the Aftermath of the Haiti Earthquake: Reinforcing Ties and Second-Generation Identity”, Garvey talks about the political and social morphological effects that the Haitian earthquake had on the Haitian Diasporic community. Before the Haitian earthquake, many Haitians were embarrassed to state that they were from Haiti. This was due to the fact that in 1980, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention claimed that Haitian people had the highest chances of contracting HIV and other diseases. This made it especially hard for Haitians to gain jobs and acquire rented apartments. However, after the onset of the Haitian earthquake, many Haitians had an extreme sense of nationalism. They took every effort in helping out the communities in their native countries. Haitian churches in New York raised donations that they sent back to Haiti for the rebuilding of houses. Many individual Haitians in the New York communities went to Haiti themselves to volunteer in helping out with the cleaning. U.S. Airlines all helped send donations and goods from American to Haiti for free. Other companies, such as Digicell, offered free SIM cards and phone charging stations so that Haitians would be able to keep in touch with their loved ones in the other countries. The course of the Haiti earthquake showed that transnationalism and second generation identity is still strong. There was a strong sense of helping their own community when they were in need of help.
