What stood out to me the most in the reading was Sophie’s rebellion. She faked the one thing she knew would crush her mother. Yes, her retaliation was obviously due to the fact that her mother had began “checking her” but, she didn’t even really lose her virginity – that act seemed selfish and spiteful. Especially after all her mother did and sacrificed for her.

Knowing what her mother went through, knowing how she came into this world it should’ve been obvious that Martine would’ve gone to extreme lengths to protect her. And yes those lengths were invasive and humiliating but Sophie retaliation was just as extreme. The man that Sophie seemed to be risking it all for was her mother’s age and the first male she seemed to ever really have feelings for, and she threw everything away for him so easy.

The significant moment that I read in the text was the ending of chapter 12. We found out the Sophie’s mother suspects her and begins to test her, just as how her mother used to do to her. Honestly I never knew anything about this kind of testing until I read this book but I suppose that it has to do with culture. I think if you want to know if someone is involved then you ask and accept what they tell you and if you have to test to satisfy your own knowledge of being certain then you lack trust, if I was Sophie then I would not have any trust for that person. Also it is just puzzling why a mother would want to test a 18 year old, she was with her for six years and she never tested her until she expressed her love interest. she kept mentioning that she there is not secret that can be kept for a mother as she found out about Sophie and Joseph. I believe that Sophie wanted so badly to break away from her mother that’s was why she used the Pestle stick,  and I was so confused as to why the mother was so quick to tell Sophie that she could go and be with Joseph after she tested her for the last time and found that she was not the same, as if to say that you are no longer the pure daughter that I wanted to have.

One part that made me feel bad was when Sophie started being tested, not because of the test that her mother did to her but because of the way her mother reacted after the test began. Sophie’s mother started putting distance between them, barely talking to Sophie, not wanting to take her when she was going out with Marc. Sophie couldn’t handle being tested anymore, feeling alone and lost so she decided to press the pestle into her part so her mother could stop the test. I don’t understand the reason of why her mother put distance between them and why she started the test. She knew that being test was not fun or comfortable at all, especially for Atie and Sophie. The other part that I don’t understand is that even when Sophie fail the test there was no going back to being a whole. The most important part that I don’t understand is Sophie’s mother didn’t even ask who was it or how it happened.

In chapter 9, Sophie, who is now attending college, meets Joseph. Joseph, who is a musician who is 2 months younger than Sophies mother, starts to fall in love with Sophie, and vice versa. The mood throughout this chapter is relaxing and gentle, and you start to see Sophie start to “rebel”.  In the chapter, Sophie quotes something Tante Atie had said about love being a rain, and that you could drown in it. At the end of the chapter, Sophie says that the music she was hearing were like raindrops and torrents. Sophie even realizes that she is feeling something, she know she shouldn’t be feeling. This leads to a foreshadowing of things that may happen later. She starts off with a “gentle rain”, but she may end up drowning. She Later on in the reading, starts to get tested by her mother since her mother is now aware of Joseph. We find that she uses a pestle to make it seem that she has lost her virginity, which has her mother fooled. She then goes to Joseph and tells him that she wants to get married. While giving the story of the woman who was constantly bleeding, she says that the woman wants to become a butterfly. Her doing this act, means that she wants to be like a butterfly. She was “held captive” by her mother and wants to be “free”, not realizing that she is already a captive to Joseph.

During these chapters Sophie is grown up and is in her teenage years. As most teenagers, she is going through the rebellious phase and goes against her mother Martine’s orders and sneaks out to see Joseph, her much older neighbor whom she is falling for. In chapter ten, Sophie and her mother spend quality time together and Sophie brings up the question whether it is okay to be interested in a boy. It is quite humorous when Martine starts to pry and asks who this boy is. This backfires when Sophie makes up a name to lie and it happens to be a real person. Later into the chapters, Sophie is caught coming home late in the morning from spending time with Joseph and she is given the “test”. Sophie uses a pestle to break her hymen to stop her mother from giving her the test.

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.