The Dew Breaker - Blog 2
November 14th, 2006 Laura Rush
I think the most striking thing about The Dew Breaker is the way in which the entire story is put together. By bringing together different scenes told from different viewpoints, the reader is allowed to see through the eyes of different narrators and therefore works to bring the story together for themselves. Danticat plays with this format, carefully controlling what information is released when. For example, the reader learns about the death of Anne’s younger brother at the beginning of the book, but it isn’t until the last story that the reader realizes through the narrative of Anne’s stepbrother that Anne herself caused this death.
By selectively releasing information to the reader, Danticat allows the many layers of the characters in her book to be peeled away like an onion. The reader is constantly going further into the psyche of the characters and at the end comes away with a better understanding of not only who they are, but also why they are the way they are. This selective release of information also mimics the way in which some of the characters themselves discover things. For example, Ka grew up unaware of the fact that her father was a prison guard and, therefore, did not really know who her father was until she was told.
The final story in the book also sets up Ka’s parents as unreliable narrators. They refuse to address the death of Anne’s stepbrother, the preacher, in honest terms. “He endorsed the public story, the one that the preacher had killed himself. And she accepted that he had only arrested him and turned him over to someone else. Neither believing the other nor themselves” (241). The event of the preacher’s death is central to most of the events that occur in the book, and the fact that Ka’s parents cannot openly acknowledge the truth to each other or anyone else leads the reader to wonder what other things they cannot acknowledge.
Entry Filed under: Reflections
