Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Playing God: Legacies Of Narrative Control In Danticat And Walker, Sarah Becker

Honors Projects and Presentations: Undergraduate

In The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat and The Color Purple by Alice Walker characters experience and manifest power through the production of narrative, naming and labeling, and bodily interactions. Abusers such as the Dew Breaker, Duvalier, and Alphonso understand power as hierarchical, gained at the expense of others. These men commit acts of physical violence, spin scapegoat narratives which justify torture and rape, and attempt to name reality and define morality for their victims; in short, they pursue the power of a god to assert hegemony and control others. Scholars such as Bellamy suggest that the Dew Breaker is …