Danticat's "The Dew Breaker"

After reading a few stories in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker, I soon realize how the characters are related, and how they fit in to their environment. The characters seem to bond throughout the stories because they are from Haiti. They tell stories of the past, which leads me to the stories entitled Seven and Night Talkers. In Seven, the characters are all living in a basement together. This is where a handful of the characters are introduced. Dany, who appears again in Night Talkers, explains his story. He traveled from New York back home to Haiti to visit his aunt who ends up dying before he can finish telling her his story of how he found and was going to kill the man who murdered his family, but he chickened out.

The stories all together do a good job at bringing the characters together, while still allowing each character to develop in their own setting. With that being said, the environments that the characters are put in are all different, but at the same time they are similar. Although they are in different places, all the characters connect in some way, whether it is friends, family, or mutual acquaintances. Most of these characters though, are living in New York and trying to adjust to living in a new place. All of the characters are from Haiti too, which creates almost a setting inside a setting. All the characters are in their own settings and environments, but they all love to talk and think about Haiti and where they belong. Every one of them is trying to find their place and where they belong, since they are far from home.