The book The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat may be comprised of several short stories but it is integrated in such a way that it conveys one story at the end of it all. The author uses several characters to bring forth his central themes in a very artistic way. It is for this reason that the roles of both men and women are used independently to develop the main character who is the Dew Breaker himself. One such character is Ka, who is the daughter of the protagonist. She helps bring out the other side of the protagonist which he thought that people did not know of but the truth is that they recognized him as one of those who instigated terror back on Haiti under a torturous regime. Ka therefore plays a very important role as will be shown in this essay.
Danticat also does use Ka to bring out the effect of reversed roles in society, that children too can be more of parents than their parents can be. This is evidently possible through the character Ka, who as a grown young woman who has taken charge of her life and even those around her. She takes on the role that she plays in her family more especially displaying attributes of maturity in the way he handles issues between her and her father. When her father disappears with the sculpture the entire day, she becomes very worried just like a parent gets worried at the disappearance of a child from their vicinity. Because of her worry, she goes on to report the incident to the police and even tells her family members what is happening. The moment when her father appears again, she becomes settled and calm one would have thought that it is a child who had gone missing (13). This episode is a major show of the character that Ka takes because all through the novel, it is evident that she acts mature and is a very concerned person on literally everything that goes on in her family more especially her father. The reversed roles that Danticat presents are a major show of how the young she is but of great influence on even other characters outside of her family
Ka also portrays the innocence of a child that is characteristic of so many other characters in the novel more especially her own mother. It is her innocence that leads her to the celebration of her father as a hero whereas he is not. The scar on his face together with the stories that he tells her make her believe that he is a hero and therefore making her want to celebrate him her own way. Little does she know that all that is a white lie and that her father is the mastermind behind the tortures in the larger Haiti. In the Diaspora, he is a different person from the man who committed the atrocities. Her innocence as a child is proven when she worries so much about her father to such an extent that she involves the police in search of him when he disappeared together with the sculpture. Her father also takes advantage of her innocence to pass for the good guy that he has made her believe he is. At the end of the day the truth comes out. Using this context, the author uses Ka’s innocence to bring to light the fact that most of the female characters in the novel live a lie not because they choose to but because they are taken advantage of. Ka is a victim of the prevailing circumstances just like the rest of the characters.
Ka is the voice of the narration of the entire story. The different stories interrelate, they seem to be revolving around one central figure and that is Ka’s father. In as much as the stories seem different, there is also another figure that is persistently present apart from the Dew Breaker and that is Ka. Through her, the mask covering his father is peeled one after another thus helping develop the story in such a way that the story is told from the perspective of a person who has lived with the protagonist and seen it all and heard it all. It is through her that the sad realities of the novel are brought to light. Just like the rest of the characters loose her father, she loses him in such a way that she can no longer see him artistically (31). Apart from losing him artistically, she does loose the humanness in him just like his subjects whom he tortured back in Haiti. It is inevitable to commend her for bringing her father’s dark side which is the main theme that runs all through the book.
Ka brings to light the bitterness and the dampening of souls that truth can do. One wonders whether the truth should just be left as it is instead of it being told to dampen people’s spirits. When he openly tells her that he is the hunter and not the hunted (20), she becomes traumatized but one wonders whether she helps him any way. By helping him, yes she may have achieved this because she makes him confess his sins. His psychological torture may have come to an end through this but his physical scars were still visible through the characters that he hurt so much including his wife. She is therefore the voice that helped develop the story as the bitter truths came to light.
Work Cited
Danticat, Edwidge. The Dew Breaker. New York: Vintage Books. 2004
