42 pages • 1-hour read
The Farming Of Bones
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Themes
Class as Equivalent to Identity
This novel showcases the tendency for class status to be the sole factor that defines one’s existence, rather than a part of who one is. For Amabelle, being a servant was not something she did to make money, but a lifestyle she was committed to. Amabelle resents her invisibility and her duty to appear when needed and disappear when directed. She realizes that as a service worker, she will always be in the background of her own life. Readers see that she is expected to be at her employers’ beck and call, night and day, ready to make a drink or birth a baby if necessary. When she is offered the position as midwife, she realizes that this would mean a complete change in the amount of power she has over her life and makes the declaration that “it was time to go on to another life, a life that would be fully” hers (80). Even though it’s ostensibly only a career change, every aspect of her life would be different because it would remove her from the subservient class.
Class defines ability. Readers can see the stark contrast between those who are high class and those who are low class when the subject of leaving the Dominican Republic comes up. For people like Señorita Beatriz, who have established a fair amount of class status, leaving the Dominican Republic is a choice based on a want to seek pleasure. For people like Amabelle and Sebastian, leaving (or coming to) the Dominican Republic is not a choice but a grave necessity. This idea is hinted at again towards the end of the book, when Amabelle eavesdrops on a tour guide who says, “famous men never truly die […] It is only those nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke” (280). This confirms that what is true in life will remain true in death: those who are poor will remain invisible even after they pass on.
Modesty
Throughout the novel, the importance of modesty, or lack thereof, comes up again and again. Amabelle is constantly sifting through nudity’s potential for healing and for hurt. Señora Valencia is opposed to nudity. Even as she is giving birth and her body is literally being split open, she rages to be covered up, as if it is insulting to her to be exposed.
Amabelle’s experiences with nudity differ. In the first chapter of the book, Sebastien asks her to strip, as if it will help her deal with her nightmares. He says, “When you are uncovered, you will know that you are fully awake” (2). Later on, Amabelle remarks that “Sebastien has made me believe that it is like a prayer to lie unclothed the way one came out of the womb” (94). In the final scene of the novel, Amabelle gets naked and enters the river. This decision seems to let the reader know that Amabelle has accepted nudity into her life, rather than rejected it.
The Cost of Xenophobia
Characters throughout The Farming of Bones struggle with the xenophobic culture present in the Dominican Republic under the Generalissimo’s rule. They are robbed of a sense of belonging; unfamiliar with their native land, and unwelcome in the new one, many of them only find comfort in the presence of other victims of xenophobia. Regardless of the time their family has spent in the Dominican Republic, and regardless of their personal contributions, they are looked down on because their nationality is different from that of the dominant culture. As one Haitian points out, “To them we are always foreigners, even if our granmémés’ granmémés were born in this country” (69).
In order to cope with this, the Haitian immigrants learn to get together and talk. As one Haitian immigrant points out, “It was a way of being joined to your old life through the presence of another person” (73). For Amabelle, this sense of belonging pressed against her two-fold because she was both a literal orphan with no family, and an orphan separated from her home country. Beyond the isolating experience xenophobia created for Haitian immigrants, it also eventually manifested into violence and death.
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