The part that stood out to me was when Tante Atie was talking about the role of women on page 151, she was explaining how each of the ten fingers on her hands represented something for women, “Mothering. Boiling. Loving. Baking. Nursing. Frying. Healing. Washing. Ironing. Scrubbing.” And that is how the way she’s brought up and probably many women. It is very oppressive because it makes women seem like objects only meant to serve men. It’s scary the obsession for women to be this perfect (almost caricature-like) housewife figures. The extent the mothers go through for their daughters to be perfect is very frightening too, like the testing to see if the hymen is not broken even though the mothers themselves hated being tested. It is like women should aspire to be with men when men get to do whatever they want and have sex with as plenty of girls they want to and it’s just not fair.

What stood out to me from chapters 13 – 19 was Tante Atie’s alcoholism. I thought it was odd how much she has changed since Sophie left to New York. Before she was a sweet motherly figure and what seemed to be wise and now she is a mess, she does not even care how she is viewed in front of Sophie. I think she became that way because Sophie was the only good thing in her life and it was taken away from her. She was like a daughter to Tante Atie and cared for her deeply but she need to stay faithful to her sister even though it was her who took care of Sophie’s childhood. Tante Atie is unable to have her own children because no one wants to be with her.

The part that I found significant was in the beginning of chapter 9 where Sophie says, “In the new place, my mother had a patch of land in the back where she started growing hibiscus. She had grown tired of daffodils.” (Page 65) I feel like that’s foreshadowing that they are becoming more Americanized and that it will become an important theme. I also feel like they are losing their culture because daffodils symbolize home, which is Haiti. Later in the reading, Sophie shows that she is becoming Americanized and wants to hide her Haitian identity, “After seven years in this country, I was tired of having people detect my accent. I wanted to sound completely American, especially for him.” (Page 69). Also in page 72, Sophie and Joseph are having a conversation and Joseph calls her out for being very American, so that further proves that Americanization is going to be a common theme in Breath, Eyes, Memory.

The part that stood out to me from chapters 5-8 of Breath, Eyes, Memory was was when the narrator was saying “Many of the American kids even accused Haitians of having AIDS because they had heard on television that only the “Four Hs” got aids—Heroin addicts, Hemophiliacs, Homosexuals, and Haitians.” Which is a horrible quote but it reminded me of something I saw on Dominican tv many years ago. This was after the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti in 2010 and the guy was saying something like “The reason why Haiti was hit with an earthquake was because Haiti is not a religious country, they believe in voodoo.” Which is probably the stupidest thing I have ever heard but it was shocking to hear that people actually thought this way. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are not even that different anyway

The part that stood out to me the most in chapters 1-4 of Breath, Eyes, Memory was the often mentioning of daffodils in the reading. It tells me that daffodils are going to be a very important symbol throughout the novel, there is even a daffodil in the cover of the book. In my research, I read that daffodils symbolize rebirth and new beginnings and that could relate to Sophie’s story because she is moving to New York and basically starting new again. I also read that daffodils are very popular in Haiti where Sophie is from, so it also represents home for her. So the meaning of the daffodil can be seen as a juxtaposition because it has two meanings that are opposite from each other.

In the reading, the part that stood out to me the most was in chapter 8 (page. 127), when Tituba was talking to Benjamin Cohen D’Azevedo in bed. Benjamin was saying how Jewish people had it though and Tituba retaliated saying, “And what about us? Do you know how many of us have been bled from the coast of Africa.” I thought it put everything into perspective because when Africans were being enslaved all these bad things were also happening to Jewish people too. I also found it interesting how well they connected because they were different and discriminated on. Though the relationship was very short-lived it seems that Tituba was very happy being with him. I think that the relationship was forced at first but eventually I felt like they genuinely fell in love and that he was not a bad guy.

In chapters 2-7 of Part II, the part that stood out to me the most was when Hester mentioned feminism to Tituba. Hester says, “You’re too fond of love, Tituba! I’ll never make a feminist out of you!” and though Hester considers herself a feminist she’s very hateful towards men. She despises men and she doesn’t want Tituba to be so into men, which is understandable with the circumstances that she has gone through but that does not define a feminist. I do agree with what she has to say though because they’re a lot of terrible men in this novel, including John Indian, who I originally thought was good. I think that most of the conflict in the novel are male oriented and the reason everything bad in the story is happening is because of men. I also feel like Tituba is a bigger feminist than Hester because she never let a guy define her, she always did what she wanted and she doesn’t look down on anyone. I wonder how Tituba is going to go on in the novel with the thought of feminism.

The part that I found most interesting was when Mary Prince went to England with her master and mistress, at that point she was suffering heavily with her rheumatism but they payed no mind to it. They thought she was lying and being lazy, which was obviously not true. They forced her to do tasks that she could not do and her owners asked her to leave the house for the third time, and she did as they asked. She left them and never came back but what was odd is that they didn’t actually want her to leave and never gave her freedom. She was technically a free woman in England but not in her native place and she wanted that. They tried to persuade her owners to give her freedom, they even offered them a big amount of money but still they did not give in. They didn’t love her or anything of that matter, so why didn’t they just take the money and let her go? That shows that they wanted to toy with her mentally and make the rest of her life insufferable.