Breath, Eyes, Memory

Breath, Eyes, Memory

Sophie in “Breath, Eyes, Memory” was born into a matriarch family in Haiti. Sophie became a strong woman who was raised without a father. In Haiti a family was suppose to be ruled by the Patriarch. Sophie only knew the women in her life, her grandmother and aunt who were strong women. Sophie’s mother was portrayed as being haunted by a shadow of her rapist and was suggested as weakened by her dreams, but her mother was actually strong due to her struggle “to stay ahead of the mental hospital.”

Sophie grew stronger when she moved to the United States when she was twelve years old. Her mother worked two jobs and left Sophie to care for herself. “I wish that I could help you do one of your jobs.” (58) Sophie attended school and saw herself through each day mostly alone. Sophie’s strength also helped her mother during her mother’s nightmares and towards the end of the book her mother became more dependent on Sophie as the dreams became more intense due to her mother’s pregnancy.

Sophie’s desire to separate herself from her mother and the ritual “test” gave her more independence from her mother’s control over her. “I waited until I heard her moaning in her sleep. I gathered my things and stuffed them into a suitcase. I had to dress quickly. I tiptoed downstairs and opened the front door. I knocked on Joseph’s door and waited for him to answer.” Sophie married an older man, Joseph, and had a child, but suffered with her mother’s mental illness. Sophie, unlike her family sought medical attention to deal with her mother and herself being traumatized from the “test” that her mother performed on her regularly.

After the birth of Sophie’s child Josephine, named after her husband Joe, Sophie returned to Haiti to her grandmother and her aunt. Sophie I believe felt alone and isolated in America as he was basically the caretaker of her mother upon arrival. She grew immediately from a child of twelve years of age to a young woman taking care of herself and her mother.

In the end of the book Sophie returns to Haiti to bury her mother who committed suicide by stabbing herself 17 times in the stomach to abort the child that spoke to her in anguish. In a critical essay by Patrick S.J. Samway in The Mississippi Quarterly “Martine commits suicide by stabbing her stomach seventeen times with an old rusty knife and killing her unwanted fetus, reminiscent of the time she tried to abort the developing Sophie in her womb.”

After the funeral, and at the end of the book, Sophie runs through the cane field to resolve her mother’s lifelong suffering which Sophie suffered herself. Her mother’s rapist became Sophie’s shadow too. Sophie strives to make a better life for her daughter and wants her daughter to sleep peacefully, unlike Sophie and her mother.


Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. Breath, Eyes, Memory
Random House Books, Inc., New York 1994

Samway, Patrick S.J. A homeward journey: Edwidge Danticat's fictional landscapes,
mindscapes, genescapes, and signscapes in Breath, Eyes, Memory.(Critical Essay).
The Mississippi Quarterly 57.1 (Winter 2003): p75(10). (3568 words)