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Chapter 18
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
The next morning, Tante Atie proudly announces that she and Louise are going to the city for the day to formally register their names in the archives, so that in the future, their descendants will be able to look them up and see that they lived in the village of La Nouvelle Dame Marie. Granmè Ifé insists that there is no need for “a woman […] worth remembering” to do such a thing, but when Louise arrives to pick Tante Atie up, Tante Atie goes with her, arm in arm.
Stories and legends from the past and reverence for one’s ancestors are an important part of Haitian culture. Tante Atie and Louise, both childless women, want to make sure that they are remembered even though they don’t have daughters to pass down their stories.
Themes
Sophie uses her camera to take some pictures of Granmè Ifé, but the old woman does not like being photographed. Sophie goes inside to put Brigitte down for a nap and get some pictures from her wallet to show her grandmother, but as she looks at an old photograph of her and Joseph, she remembers the pain of their wedding night, which took place several weeks after she left Martine’s. The night was painful, and Sophie felt like she was being torn open all over again—yet she felt sex was her duty to her husband now that he had become “the only person in the world watching over [her.]”
Sophie’s desire to take pictures of her grandmother shows that she wants to reframe her memories of home and make new ones as well—even though Sophie clearly has a complicated relationship with memory and trauma, and is easily triggered into reliving some of the most painful moments of her past.
Themes
After Brigitte’s nap, Sophie takes her outside to sit on the porch. She watches as Eliab flies a kite in the yard along with some others. Just as Eliab gets his kite up into the sky, another kite—with glass attached to its tail—swoops onto his and fells it. Eliab sits down on the ground and cries.
Eliab’s kite being knocked out of the sky by another boy’s represents Sophie’s attempts to heal being smashed down by her own painful memories and recollections.
Themes
