Frankétienne’s Dézafi offers unique insights into Haitian society due to its examination of the complex relations between various community sections. One such issue discussed in the novel is women’s role in changing the trajectory of a group’s history (Lacet 47). Two female characters in the story, Rita and Sintila, cause such changes in their towns, but their motivations are different. Due to this, Rita is the heroine in the story as she embodies the spirit of endurance in the face of seemingly unending social problems.
Rita is a young girl who has to work due to the poverty her family lives in. When the readers first encounter Rita, she is a hardworking housemaid in her uncle’s house in Port-Au-Prince (Frankétienne 25). Despite being a meticulous person in her endeavors, her uncle Jédéyon does not appreciate her efforts. She cooks, cleans, and ensures that Jédéyon has a comfortable life. However, the latter is ungrateful and does not acknowledge Rita’s dedication to serving him well (Frankétienne 30). Moreover, he continuously berates her for referring to him as an uncle, which is a courteous term. Thus, Rita persevered the poor treatment to help feed her family.
Despite never having received any formal education, Rita is determined to learn. Since she worked when her peers went to school, she missed the chance to be enrolled in a learning facility (McFee 380). It is due to this reason that she is unable to read and write. However, her illiteracy does not dampen her willingness to attempt reading any word that comes across her way (Frankétienne 30). One such instance is when Rita stops by a poster on her way to the market to decipher what the words meant. This admirable effort clearly shows how Rita still had the dream to overcome her illiteracy.
Besides an undying will to be literate, Rita also mourns for her lost childhood. To provide for her family in their poverty-ridden village, she starts working to earn some money. She searches for a job and eventually gets one at uncle Jédéyon’s house. After that, the girl tries her best to satisfy the strict demands of the seemingly bitter man. While working, Rita does not get the time to play as her peers (Frankétienne 30). In one instance, while going for an errand to the market, she nostalgically looks at children having fun. Even at her young age, Rita realized that having no normal childhood is a sacrifice she was willing to make.
The village of Bouanef is terrorized by their priest, Sintil. The voodoo priest gives the villagers sleepless nights because he can utilize spells to control the community members. Through his attacks, Sintil can make people subservient to him (Gottin 73). The priest has a daughter called Sultana, who helps him manage his plantation. Besides, a character named Zofe closely watches the plantation workers for any misconduct. Outside his home, Sintil has a reputation for being a womanizer, and the villagers fear him for his spells.
Sintil uses his magic spells to attain workers for his plantation. Since he is a voodoo priest, Sintil has magical powers that enable him to zombify dead bodies (Gardner 83). Consequently, he sneaks into the cemeteries at night and digs up recently buried bodies (Frankétienne 147). Thereafter, he casts a spell on them that brings them back to life. However, the spells do not offer the bodies full functionality but give them enough cognitive power to cultivate the plantation (Daniels 210). As a result, Sintil always has enough workers on his farm due to his ability to transform corpses into zombies.
However, the zombies have to be kept in their stuporous state by denying them salt to subjugate them. Siltana is responsible for making food for the zombies. Her father repeatedly warns her against putting salt in the diet of the farmworkers. He claims that salt will open their eyes to their desperate state and cause instability on the farm (Frankétienne 148). She follows her father’s specifications and is a generally dutiful daughter. Additionally, Zofe threatens the zombies with painful beatings and starvation to quell any rebellion among them. The lack of salt in the diet and the harsh working environment ensure the farmworkers’ continued repression.
The plantation undergoes a transformation when Klodonis is brought to work the fields. The confident young man irks Sintil, who hatches plans to make him a zombie. This motive is because Sintil abhors educated men who he sees are a threat to his continued domination of the villagers (Frankétienne 152). Subsequently, Klodonis is poisoned during a visit to Fabi’s shack. He dies a few days later, after which Sintil turns him into a zombie to work on his farm. The addition of an honorable young lad to the farm laborers plants the seeds for the eventual fall of Sintil.
Siltana is attracted to Klodonis’ traits and even starts to like him. When he arrives on the farm, he proves himself to be different in the way he carries himself. He works meticulously and still portrays some skills outside of his usual work requirements (Clocksin 54). This attracts the attention of Siltana, who eventually falls in love with him (Frankétienne 147). However, due to his state, Klodonis fails to reciprocate Siltana’s feelings towards him. Siltana tries to persuade Klodonis to run away together, but this falls to deaf ears. Klodonis only responds with the usually incomprehensible mumbling of zombies. In short, Siltana grows to like Klodonis while working the farm because of his personality and wishes to elope with him.
In an act of desperation, Siltana gives Klodonis salt to escape her father’s farm with him. Siltana is alone with Klodonis one night since Sintil had gone to the cockfighting competition – the Dezafi. However, Zofu was out drinking alcohol and only came home later in the night while drunk. He encounters Siltana and attempts to touch her breasts without her consent. When Siltana threatens to report the incident to her father, Zofu tells her that he will inform her father of her love for Klodonis (Frankétienne 151). Afterward, Klodonis wrestles with Siltana to gain access to the house. She hits him with a pestle and leaves him unconscious. After that, she quickly gives Klodonis salt to make him regain his senses.
In a final turn of events, Klodonis leads the villagers in a rebellion that uninstalls Sintil as the village priest. After Siltana gives salt to Klodonis, he wakes up from his zombie-like state after a slight fever and some abdominal pain (Frankétienne 151). However, Klodonis is not as agreeable as she hoped he would be and is violent. He physically assaults her and promptly gives the other zombies salt (Flaugh and Christian 45). Consequently, the hitherto meek slaves of Sintil turn into an uncontrollable destructive mob. Led by Klodonis, they start destroying the property on the farm and kill Zofe. Afterward, the former zombies, accompanied by the villagers, murder Sintil in the Dezafi grounds.
Between the two characters of Rita and Siltana, I choose Rita to be the heroine in the story. This is because she is faced with poverty and diligently works hard to make ends meet. On top of that, she stoically endures her grumpy employer, who finds fault in every task Rita does in the house. Additionally, she still has dreams to teach herself how to read despite her circumstances. On the other hand, Siltana’s desperate action of giving salt to her love interest, Klodonis, leads directly to the collapse of Sintil’s tyranny in the village. However, this is not a heroic act as her goal was to escape with Klodonis and not put an end to her father’s reign of terror. Thus, Rita’s sheer determination to improve her living conditions in the face of difficult circumstances makes her the story’s heroine.
In conclusion, both Siltana and Rita are faced with important decisions in Frankétienne’s Dézafi. Rita dutifully works to alleviate her family from suffering despite sacrificing her chance to be literate and enjoy her childhood. Similarly, Siltana is in a dilemma of whether to elope with her father’s work or not. But unlike Rita, Siltana’s choice has a selfish motive. This leaves Rita as the heroine of the story and an important source of inspiration.
References
Clocksin, Jeana. Unearthing Early Haitian Creole literature: The literary, Linguistic and Sociocultural Significance of Ti-Jak by Carrié Paultre. 2018. SUNY Brockport, senior thesis.
Daniels, Kyrah Malika. “Spirit Possession in French, Haitian, and Vodou Thought: An Intellectual History by Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2016, pp. 208−215.
Flaugh, Christian. “Engaging Reality and Popular Performance in the” Théâtre Humain” of Guy Régis.” Journal of Haitian Studies, vol. 22, no. 1, 2016, pp. 46−80.
Frankétienne. Dézafi: A Novel. Translated by Asselin Charles, U of Virginia P, 2018.
Gardner, Kelly. “‘They Are Not Men, Monsieur… They Are Zombies…’: The Construction of Haitian Identity and the Work of the Left Hand.” Tropical Gothic in Literature and Culture, edited by Justin D. Edwards and Sandra G. T. Vasconcelos, Routledge, 2016, pp. 81−94.
Gottin, Katia. “Spiralist Testifying in Jean-Claude Fignole’s Aube Tranquille: Reading the Victim-Perpetrator Dialectic in Haitian Literature.” French Review, vol. 91, no. 2, 2017, pp. 74−85.
Lacet, Castagna. “Fanm Vanyan: A Cultural Interpretation of Resilience in Haitian Women.” Journal of International Women’s Studies, vol. 17, no. 3, 2016, pp 45−58.
McFee, Mollie. “Beyond Translation: The Matrice of Frankétienne’s Dezafi.” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 54, no. 2, 2017, pp. 381−405.