42 pages • 1 hour read
Edwidge DanticatThe Dew Breaker
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 8 Summary: “The Funeral Singer”
This part is about three Haitian American women who are studying to pass a class that will gain them an English-speaking diploma. They do their homework at the Manhattan Haitian restaurant of one of the women, Rézia. The story is narrated by the youngest of the women, a professional funeral singer from Haiti who often sketches portraits in a notebook.
Studying at the restaurant allows the women the opportunity to bond and socialize. They often drink rum and wine and share stories of the past. Unfortunately, their test scores suffer as a result.
The narrator’s father was a fisherman in Haiti, and she gained experience at sea with him. Before her father was arrested, they worshipped the president (presumably Baby Doc), who was rumored to go around handing out money and food to citizens. Mariselle and Rézia, the other women, also grew up in Haiti. Mariselle’s husband was an artist who once painted a picture of Jackie Kennedy, adding Mariselle in the background. He was shot for drawing a negative portrait of the Haitian president. Rézia was sold into prostitution by her parents. The narrator, meanwhile, had to leave because she refused an invitation to sing at the presidential palace.
Part 8 Analysis
This story is structured uniquely, according to the 14 weeks of the class. Some of these “weeks,” however, are not present events but memories. This symbolizes the way in which the past and present intermix in our daily lives. In fact, as the narrator tells the reader these stories of the past, she is sharing them with her friends as well.
Community recurs as a theme here, this time with a gender inflection. Most of the characters in the book have been isolated, especially the men. It seems that women have a special role in creating community, particularly by telling oral stories. Women’s role in creating community is reflected in how Anne tries to foster a shared faith in her husband and daughter by taking them to Mass, in how Estina works as a midwife in several nearby villages, and in how Aline interviews Beatrice about her life story. In Part 8 this role is evidenced by the narrator’s former job, as she was hired to sing at funerals and thereby facilitate the emotional process involved in grief. The three women in the story pose a contrast to Eric, Dany, and Michel, who live together in the basement only for financial reasons and ultimately pursue very different and isolated paths.
This section also continues the motif of art. Though their art may not be inherently political, artists like Mariselle’s husband are often drawn into politics in repressive regimes because their work represents freedom. The narrator’s singing is another form of creative expression, one the regime tried to buy in attempting to hire her. Both artists are punished for declining to create in service of the regime: Mariselle’s husband is killed, and the narrator flees Haiti.
Another element of art is that it has the power to connect great historical figures to ordinary individuals. Mariselle’s husband painted a picture of Jackie Kennedy when she visited Haiti and included Mariselle in the background of the painting. While Mariselle and Jackie Kennedy are seemingly divided by a great gulf, art thus has the power to represent them both and explore the connections between them.
Finally, we should consider the fact that after her father disappeared, the narrator kept a notebook that she filled with pictures of faces she drew to keep her company. In this way, art serves as a compensation for the tragedies inflicted by reality.
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By Edwidge Danticat
