After reading the first half of The Dew Breaker I began to put together why we read those selected chapters from Danitcat’s collection of essays. I felt like I was introduced to her style of writing, which I believe feels rush, but in a very good way. As I was reading the novel, I kept trying to read faster, hoping to keep pace with the events that were unfolding in the story. Our two introductory essays on Danticat sort of braced me for what was to come. In “Create Dangerously,” we were introduced to two men, Marcel Numa and Louis Drouin, who were basically made martyrs by the very government they sought to tear down. The leader of the government, “Papa Doc” Duvalier, wanted to make an example out of the men; anyone who decided to stand against him would face the same consequences. I think this essay is incredibly powerful, especially in a modern context. All over the world there are many who face injustices everyday, and these victims are left virtually powerless, except for the power of art. By art, I don’t mean paintings, but mean all sorts of arts, such as writing, music, performances and many others. These arts reach global scales and peacefully bring attention to many of the problems faced in our world. Ironically, the song mentioned at the beginning of the second essay, “The Other Side of the Water,” happens to be one of these songs. “Beds Are Burning,” by Midnight Oil, is a protest song that calls for the returning of Australian land to the native peoples who occupied the Australian deserts. Modern artists, to raise awareness about climate change, recently even covered the song. Using a catchy song, these issues were propelled to the spotlight, by people who would be otherwise powerless.
Moving into the novel, I was sort of confused after reading the first fifty or so pages. At first, it felt like each chapter was very unrelated to the last. For example, one moment the reader is with a mother and her family at Christmas mass, and the next they are under a hot red sun in the Haitian mountains. As I said earlier, it feels like you are taken on a thrill ride, one you really don’t have much control over. As for the content of each chapter, they feel like vignettes; each one simply starts, focuses in one a specific person, ordeal or location, and then quickly ends without much closure. It took me a hundred or so pages to realize what was actually going on. Each story is very much related; in fact, many people in each chapter end up having very profound effects on another person in a later chapter. The constant between the first half of the book appears to be a single family, that of Ka’s. Ka’s family does not seem like the typical immigrant family we have been studying. Her father left Cuba after working in a prison, where he brutally hurt and occasionally killed prisoners, while we only know that her mother is a devout, church going Catholic.
Even though I’m just halfway through the book, some serious themes seem to be present. One that seems to be in every chapter is on family, and how your family members will always be with you, regardless if you want them to or not. Ka, though she resents her father, is still his daughter and is bonded by blood, just as Dany, who lost his aunt, is still bonded to his village “family” through a place of origin. Another theme that just starts to pop up towards the end of the “Night Talkers” chapter is retribution and revenge. Dany went to New York, and after finding his parents’ killer, devoted his life to exacting revenge. Even though he had the chance to kill Ka’s Father, he decided not to, whether it was because he would be guilty if it was the wrong man, as he says, or because he experienced a sort of moral dilemma, perhaps wondering if the fathers death would really fill the hole left inside him by the death of his parents.
