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Chapter 19
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
That night, Louise comes over for supper, bringing with her a smaller pig as a gift to Granmè Ifé and Tante Atie. The two of them have successfully registered their names in town—and have brought back a package from the Poste and Télégramme bureau which bears the address of Martine’s Nostrand Avenue apartment. Tante Atie rips the envelope open and puts it into the cassette player—as it starts, Sophie hears her mother’s voice for the first time in years. On the tape, Martine reports that she has been in touch with Sophie’s husband, Joseph, who is very concerned about her whereabouts—Sophie has left home with Brigitte but hasn’t told him where she’s gone. Sophie, ashamed, tries to stop the tape. Tante Atie tells Sophie that it’s time Sophie and her mother reconciled.
Sophie realizes that although she tried to escape to Haiti to avoid the demands of her marriage and get away from confronting her traumas and fears, her time is up. Others are now suspicious of her reasons for leaving the U.S., and it is only a matter of time before she must reckon with her past. This realization suggests that it is impossible to recreate the idealized innocence of one’s childhood home—although Sophie has returned back to where she grew up in hopes of outrunning her adult problem’s, it’s clear that the feeling of comfort and security she seeks more complicated than returning to a physical place.
Themes
