The Dew Breaker #1

Recently, I've been reading Edwidge Danticat's The Dew Breaker for African American lit. Reading to the chapter, "Night Talkers," I have noticed a theme of traumatic events happening to the mian characters of the story. We talked about this a little in class today. The first character experiences the trauma of learning new information about her father which completely changes her view of his past, which also alters her past in a way. She finds that instead of being tortured in Haiti, he was a torturer. The next two characters are married but were separated for seven years after they were wed, and were just now getting to reunite. They hold the secrets that they have both been seeing other people while they were away, and this is a form of trauma in the form of guilt. I'm sure it also drives them crazy wondering what the other was doing while they were apart. The next character was in love with the married man, and had an affair with him while his wife was away. She went through the trauma of loving a man who was unavailable, and becoming pregnant with his child and having an abortion. She too is feeling guilt, remorse, and I think she feels very degraded. I think she still longs for the man.
There is also a minor character who loses her voice, which symbolizes the shock people go through when they lose something they took for granted. I think all of these characters took something for granted. The first girl took for granted the idea she had always had of her father; she took for granted that he was an innocent, good person. The couple took each other for granted, and thier marriage as well. The other girl took her child for granted, and was going through the shock of losing it, even though she chose to do it. She knew the man was unavailable, yet she fell in love with him and is now going through extreme heartbreak. I found it interesting that she could tell the readers that the patients of the hospital were always shocked when they had no voices, even though they knew they were having the procedure done. Yet she doesn't realize she has done this to herself as well.