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Edwidge Danticat writes frequently about silence, distance, mothers, and the mother-daughter relationship, as in her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory. In The Dew Breaker, her fifth book-length work of fiction, she again addresses silence, particularly the responsibility of the voiced to the voiceless and the role of the artist in recording history. However, the novel's dominant metaphor for the structure beneath power and oppression in Haiti is the father. There is not a typecast role for the father in The Dew Breaker, but a myriad of masks that the father wears. Danticat's work does not imply that patriarchy or male power in itself is responsible for the ongoing trials of the Haitians. Rather, to borrow Jungian terminology without getting bogged down in its "essentialism," the shadow side of the father archetype seems to hold the historical nexus of power there. In Danticat's work, the father is ultimately unknowable-yet his behavior can fit into one or more of three categories: 1 ) dictatorial, sadistic and self-deifying; 2) neutrally distant, elusive, absent or mad; or 3) strong, committed and self-reflective. Understanding the father as a metaphor for the historical relationship between the powered and the powerless in Haiti is one way to look at the underlying structure of Haiti's trials, and at the same time to offer a note of optimism for its future.
The Dew Breaker consists of nine short stories sufficiently interwoven to be considered a novel. The central character is an unnamed Duvalierera Tonton Macoute, who, after wielding power and torture at Haiti's infamous casernes prison, flees to New York. There he starts a family and lives among his former victims and their families. Three stories offer a close-up view of the Dew Breaker, whom, depending on the context, I will refer to as the Dew Breaker or M. Bienamé: "The Book of the Dead," "Book of Miracles," and "The Dew Breaker;" the first, fourth and ninth stories respectively. The novel's other stories concern characters whose lives have been forever altered by this central, highly-complex character.
Extremes of patriarchal power and violence have been present in Haiti since the beginning when European explorers nearly obliterated the native population of Arawak Indians and the French-imported African slaves to create a prosperous sugar and coffee-producing colony...