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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Mothers, Daughters, and Generational Trauma
Virginity and Violence
Home
Memory, Storytelling, and the Past
Summary
Analysis
After breakfast, Sophie leaves Brigitte with Tante Atie and follows Granmè Ifé to the market. As she shadows her grandmother through town, Sophie is impressed with the efficient, no-nonsense way she shops. At the market, Sophie spies Louise at her cola stand, selling drinks to a few Macoutes. One of them makes a lewd gesture at Sophie, and she quickly looks away. As Granmè Ifé and Sophie pass Louise’s stand, Louise asks if they want to buy her pig. Granmè Ifé shrugs her off, but Louise pays the kite boy Sophie saw at the marketplace the day before to watch her stand while she continues hounding them. As they walk through the market, Sophie notices a Macoute picking a fight with a coal vendor named Dessalines. Sophie cannot look away even as the fight escalates and a group of Macoutes kick the coal vendor to the ground.
The Macoutes’ tyranny continues to be a serious threat not just to women, but to villagers of all kinds. Sophie’s shock at witnessing such violence firsthand renders her unable to look away, perhaps showing just how different her relatively sheltered life in New York has been from her family’s life in Haiti. Her reaction also implies that something in her is curious about the violence her own mother suffered at the hands of a Macoute so many years ago.
Themes
After the violence at the market, Granmè Ifé and Sophie head for home. Sophie asks why her grandmother spoke so callously to Louise, but Granmè Ifé won’t give her a straight answer—all she says is that since Tante Atie moved to the village from Croix-des-Rosets, the two of them haven’t gotten along. Sophie assures Granmè Ifé that Tante Atie loves her and just wants to take care of her, but Granmè Ifé believes that Tante Atie is with her out of duty and not love.
This passage seems to suggest that Granmè Ifé knows that Tante Atie loves Louise—perhaps romantically or sexually—and would rather be with her all the time. She seems to resent Atie for wanting to get away from home, much like Martine felt threatened by Sophie’s relationship with Joseph.
Themes
