Breath, Eyes, Memory (Chpts. 28-35)

Breath, Eyes, Memory
By: Edwidge Danticat
Pages: 177-234

• Summary

Part 4
During the first chapter a lot of things are revealed about Sophie and Martine. Martine has breast cancer and Sophie developed bulimia when she got married. Sophie spends the night with her mother and their relationship seems to be more understanding. This is probably because Sophie now goes through the same things as her mother and understands her better.
Martine tells Sophie that she is pregnant. Martine doesn't want to keep the baby because it makes the nightmares worse and it feels like she's getting raped every night.
Sophie feels as if her and Martine's relationship with each other is more now and she feels like they have become twins.
In order to deal with her nightmares and hard times Sophie goes to a sexual phobia group with three other women. She also sees a therapist. During her meeting with her therapist Sophie admits that she fears abandonment from everyone in her life except from her daughter. The therapist recommends that Sophie go back with Martine to the place where she was raped so they could both confront it and leave it behind.
During a family dinner with Joseph, Sophie, Marc, and Martine,Martine tells Sophie her decision to get rid of the baby inside of her.A couple of days later Marc calls about the death of Martine. She was found lying in the bathroom surrounded by blood. She had stabbed herself in the stomach 17 times.
Sophie left her suspicions of Marc behind and went to Haiti to follow her mother's wishes of being burried in Haiti. Sophie chose to bury her mother all in bright red. During the procession Sophie ran into the cane fields. The book ends wonderfully when Sophie's grandmother comes to Sophie in the cane fields and puts her hands on her shoulder and explains how "you will hear your mother telling a story and at the end of the tale, she will ask you this question: 'Ou libere?' Are you free, my daughter?"

• Quote

"I come from a place where breath, eyes, and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My mother was as brave as stars at dawn. She too was from this place. My mother was like that woman who could never bleed and then could never stop bleeding, the one who gave in to her pain, to live as a butterfly. Yes, my mother was like me" (Danticat 234).

• Reaction

This is in the last chapter when Sophie runs into the cane fields during the funeral procession of her mother's death. These are Sophie's thoughts. I think that when she runs into the cane fields it was her way of freeing herself. She came to the realization of how similar her and her mother was. They were both brave and sought to live longer than their nightmares. Though her mother didn't win the fight Sophie can use this as a time to confront all of her fears. She can confront and then leave behind all her troubles and the source of all the mishaps in her life. I really liked this quote because it included the title in it. I think the title shows how her current life, what she sees, and her pass are all one. This is the world in which Sophie and her mother came from. Their past followed them throughout their whole lives. Now with Sophie it all ends and she is finally free.