I love how the beginning of this last reading starts. If anyone ever traveled to a third world country, or somewhere not as developed as New York. The first thing you notice as soon as you get here is all the traffic and all the bright lights and big stores. I notice it everytime when i comeback from the Dominican Republic. When i am over there i enjoy the peace of the country side no lights at night nor traffic. But as soon as i get here and see all that, that is when i know im back home. Another part that stuck out to me in the final part was when Sophie looks at her daughter and sees how peacefully she sleeps. She has peace in mind knowing that the reason her daughter can sleep is because she doesnt have nightmares like her and her mother. It shows you how innocent children are and as we grow up so do our fears and nightmares.

With the end of the book, we reach an unexpected end that would probably shake the core of whoever was deeply reading this novel. We see Martin commit suicide in an attempt to abort her child. But with this, we can argue that, she didn’t just do this to abort the child, but to kill herself so she could be free. This could be related to when Sophie had broken her hymen so she could escape the constant tests of her mother. In a like manner, Martin was suffering from the horrors of the rape she had suffered, so she could escape the nightmares and unrest that she was going through. During Martin’s  funeral, Ifé even asked Sophie if she knows freedom. The main point in the novel seems to be “How far are you willing to go to be free?”

While reading this portion of the book, I gained a lot of clarity on many issues regarding the “caco” women; more generally women living painful lives which spurs from a troubled past. In the earlier portions of the book I sympathized only with Sophie and slightly despised her mother as I thought ; how could she have gone through such a horrible experience herself and still turned around and put her own daughter through the same thing, but while reading this section I realized that Martine was probably suffering the most of all the caco women, so much so that her past became such an heavy burden that it consumed her and resulted in her death. Although Sophie had her own struggles with her past she was lucky to  be educated more than the rest of the other women, and was making improvements in therapy and her sexual phobia group. Although it’s sad that Martine got consumed by the pain of her past and ended up killing herself and her unborn Child, the repetition of freedom was the thing that stood out to me the most from this section, which made me to think that her death signified a lot of freedom for her, so in a sense she is better off than the rest of the other women.

While reading this section of the book, this book took my emotions on a rollercoaster. For some reason I just felt that this book was going to get really sad throughout the ending. Its almost as if they were dropping hints , because as sophie spoke to her mother and finding out that shes pregnant, she began to ask her about her nightmares and hows she’s feeling and what she was going to do with the baby and she kept saying she is too old to have a baby and shes too old to marry marc. I just had a feeling that this book wasnt going to have a nice ending. The part that stood out to me was the meeting  of Joseph and her mother. I feel that the only reason the meeting went well is because her mother became more understanding and instead of being the strict mother she was throughout the book she became more of a friend to sophie. also the part that stood out was the negro spiritual that she sang for them. My friend sang this song when we were younger in a play, although it was just for a play this song really affected her because a couple years back she lost her mother to cancer  and as she sang the song i watched as the song overtook her emotionally that as she exited the stage she was still crying because of the truth to the song. Another part that stood out to me was the death of her mother. this part stood out to me because as she began to blame Marc and ask him why did he give her a child? and did he not know about her nightmares he told her she knew more about them but where was she? I felt that this part made her mothers death worse for her because not only did she lose her mother but she now feels at fault for abandoning her mother to go live her life. At first I did feel like Marc did it  he seemed suspicious because he was able to sleep after she died and then he cleaned up everything spotless except for the sheets in the bathroom. but he showed that he was affected by her death by expressing how badly he wanted her to have his child, then as they went to haiti and attended her funeral his emotions was shown.

As the book draws closer to the conclusion we can see some parallelism between mother and daughter. Sophie and Martine both wake up at night because of nightmares and similarly, hide it from their men. Martine is also pregnant but isn’t sure whether to keep the baby. In the end, Martine commits suicide and although this is very tragic this may have set Sophie free from her demons. During the funeral Sophie takes off her shoes and beats the cane possibly suggesting that Sophie has come to terms with the suffering since ultimately her mother is the root of her pain. It appears that although the suffering has been passed down from grandmother to mother to Sophie, Sophie will be the one to break the vicious cycle. In other words, Sophie will not be testing her daughter Brigitte.

The moment from reading this portion of the text that I thought was significant is when Martine commits suicide by stabbing herself in the stomach to get rid of the unwanted pregnancy. She kept mentioning to Sophie that she was going to get rid of it and that she had a plan, personally I am not one for abortion and for her to go about it the way she did was way too extreme.  But we saw a woman who had suffered all her life and wasn’t able to fight anymore and to add to all that mentally she was losing her mind. I felt as though she could have gotten better or improved had she went to see a psychiatrist, but the fear of confronting the past was too much for her to bear and she felt as though she had no way out. I believe that Sophie had the confrontation for herself when she broke away from her mother’s burial and ran to the cane fields, if shows us that Sophie was an even greater fighter than her mother was and that she desired to be free

Sophie did not have the physical presence of her mother for several years of her life although her mother provided for her, Tante Atie and Grandmother Ifé during that time.

As Sophie and her mother started to overcome their differences and started to develop a good relationship, Sophie was informed that her mother was pregnant (pp.189-1). The pregnancy brought Sophie and her mother (Martine) even closer because Sophie became a support system for her mother who had started to depend on her a great deal.

The pregnancy brought Martine to a psychotic state while she recalls the rape that traumatized her all her life; she is traumatized, this time more than ever although the sex was conscientious. I felt really sad that Martine committed suicide leaving her family and loved ones in grief. Perhaps, memories of the rape brought her pain that was too much for her to bear.

what really interest me about this section is how when martine reveal why she tested sophie back in newyork and martine says that it wasn’t nothing about not trusting you but it was more about not knowing what else to do cause her mother did it to her, like i said in class, martine only did it to sophie because its her first time in the position of being a mother so she didn’t know what else to do, but at the same time there is a contradiction between she testing sophie and when her mom use to get tested because the mom hated the test so much that she says that she was basically happy she got rape because the testing stopped, but in return she has to live with these nightmares she has been having and when she came down to haiti it appears that the nightmares has gotten worse