Hope Against All Hope in Haiti

Set in a small village in Haiti, Claire of the Sea Light is a novel about loss and hope. Ville Rose has a long history of poverty and hardship. A few prominent families run the town, the school and local businesses, but the vast majority of its inhabitants are poor. The novel begins and ends with a poor widowed fisherman named Nozias and his seven-year-old daughter Claire Limye Lanme — Claire of the Sea Light. Nozias’ wife Claire died giving birth, and Nozias has struggled ever since with the fear of leaving his daughter an orphan. His solution is to find a kind and dependable woman to be her mother now and to essentially give Claire up and try to find a new life alone elsewhere.

The events of this story cover a ten-year time span in flashback and involve the stories of several other residents of Ville Rose. Gaelle Lavaud is the wealthy owner the fabric store; Bernard had great dreams of a career in radio; Max Ardin, Sr. is a respected member of the community and runs the local school, while his son Max Jr., a former radio DJ, has just returned from 10 years in the US; Louise is a well known radio interviewer and sometime teacher in the Ardin’s school. At first it isn’t clear what any of these characters have to do with one another, much less Nozias and Claire, but Danticat’s beautifully written narrative shows the intricate web of relationships in Ville Rose. It is a small town where the lives of the rich and poor cross paths, often through tragedy, and in the words of Nozias’ wife Claire, “We must look after each other.”

The poverty of Ville Rose, the proximity of life and death, of past and present, run throughout the narrative. Several characters experience tragic loss of life through senseless accidents or conscious acts of violence, and those losses haunt their lives moving forward. Nozias’ wife Claire worked at the funeral home until she became pregnant, then died as her daughter was born. Her work washing and preparing the dead for burial caused many to shun her but made Nozias love her all the more. Gaelle lost her husband the day her daughter was born, the daughter that she had been advised to abort due to suspected birth defects. Young Bernard, a washout at the police academy, dreams of his own radio program in which he can expose the great losses of his community as a result of violence — the loss of limbs, the loss of family members and of friends. “These were the real ghosts, he would say, the phantom limbs, phantom minds, phantom loves that haunted them because they were used, then abandoned, because they were out of choices, because they were poor.” The Ardins seem to have an enchanted life, being wealthy, well connected, respected members of the community, but Max Jr’s story reveals dark secrets and deep sadness. Danticat’s use of flashbacks throughout the novel is very effective. The flashbacks demonstrate that the events of a decade ago are still very real to the characters and that the repercussions are still felt. The past is very present to the residents of Ville Rose.

And yet hope has not been extinguished. The main characters hold on to the idea that life can perhaps get better, that it is worthwhile. For Gaelle and Claire the wife, getting pregnant and giving birth are powerful acts of hope. Nozias’ choices are made in the hopes of a better life for his child. While I would not call the ending to this novel happy, I would say that it is hopeful. “We must look out for each other” seems to be the moral of the story. Everyone deals with hardship and pain, it’s unavoidable, but survivable with help.