The Dew Breaker

Totalitarianism is the shadow that lies over all the characters in this book, even many years after Haiti’s totalitarian era, and even after many of them immigrate to the United States. Although the text surveys Haitian characters with varied backstories and present circumstances, the totalitarian regime affected them all, leaving behind a variety of scars, whether physical or emotional or both.

While many novels about totalitarianism are written as dystopias, portraying the daily lives of those under a repressive regime, Danticat’s novel explores how totalitarianism can be embodied by perpetrators and victims and continue to oppress subsequent generations even after the regime has fallen. This anguish is seen transcending generational lines through characters like Ka and Aline, who are both confronted with the reality of the Haitian regime and the dew breakers, and who both turn to creative outlets (sculpture and writing, respectively) to process that reality and their response to it.

Some characters, like Ka’s father, were corrupted by participating in the violent acts of the totalitarian regime. His scars are apparent on his physical body, with one that slashes across his face, and in his behavior and demeanor, as he struggles with the weight of his remorse while spinning a web of lies to conceal his culpability. That Ka’s father has kept his involvement in the regime secret from Ka until the events of Part 1, hiding the truth behind his scars and life history, reveals the depth of his guilt. However, his confession suggests that the truth is crucial to heal and move forward. Hiding such crimes is futile and possibly even destructive, as it stalls and aggravates the process of confrontation, reconciliation, and healing.

In a way, Michel serves as a foil to Ka’s father. Ka’s father spends years avoiding his past as a perpetrator of the totalitarian regime, and this choice spawns additional consequences, throwing Ka into a spiral of uncertainty upon learning the truth. Michel, however, opts to record his experiences in a memoir for his unborn son. Recording these events helps Michel process and acknowledge them, and it ensures his son will know his heritage. Armed with that truth, perhaps Michel’s son will avoid the same internal conflict that afflicts others in the novel.

Other characters, like Beatrice, are haunted by the terrors inflicted on them in the past. She is convinced that the same dew breaker who had her feet whipped as punishment in Haiti has followed her to New York. Here the dew breaker is not literally Ka’s father but more an avatar of the Haitian regime and the many individuals who enacted and enforced its policies. That this haunting figure finds Beatrice no matter where or how many times she moves further demonstrates how past hardship shadows and informs our lives even years later. Whether this dew breaker is real or a figment of Beatrice’s imagination is inconsequential, because the ways totalitarianism disrupted her life are very real and permanent. Beatrice is not the only character haunted by the past: Anne is still burdened by the death of her stepbrother, and she fears her husband will be recognized and arrested for his crimes. The fact that he, a dew breaker of the regime, killed her stepbrother, a preacher and a civilian, haunts their relationship (even though this truth remains unspoken).