To Da-Duh, In Memoriam

Da-duh, the narrator’s grandmother, is a complex figure who serves as an antagonist in the narrative. She has both literal and figurative significance, and detailed physical description supports her characterization. She is an elderly woman, “eighty-odd years” old, emaciated by age and circumstances. The narrator notes in particular that she is worn by the passage of time, both physically and as represented in her “ancient dress.” She has a weathered face but intelligent eyes. She struggles to keep her back ramrod straight even as it becomes bent with age, suggesting stubborn perseverance and pride. Despite this imposing attitude, however, Da-duh is also sensitive and human. The narrator becomes aware of her grandmother’s frailty when she recognizes that Da-duh is holding her hand tightly while on a truck because of Da-duh’s “fear and distrust” of machines (99).  

Da-duh is based on author Paule Marshall’s own grandmother and their relationship. As she writes in the introduction to the story, “Ours was a complex relationship—close, affectionate yet rivalrous. During the year I spent with her a subtle kind of power struggle went on between us” (95). Similarly, Da-duh and the narrator have a relationship of love and affection tempered by a sense of rivalry. Da-duh shows her love toward the narrator obliquely: She is not overly affectionate with her language. Instead, her passion for showing the narrator things of which she is proud, such as the abundance of the island and its flora, suggests her desire to share these riches with someone she loves. Da-duh’s willingness to withhold judgment when she might criticize also reveals her feelings for the narrator: Although she finds her granddaughter’s passion for the pop music of the day bewildering, she nevertheless indulges it by listening to the narrator sing Rag Time tunes and rewarding the performance with a penny to buy candy. After Da-duh’s “defeat,” she sinks into herself, appearing “listless,” “thinner and suddenly indescribably old” (104). The narrator interprets this transformation as a child might: She assumes that her insistence that the Empire State Building is taller than the tallest tree on the island broke Da-duh’s spirit and caused her to “give up.” This is a key point where Da-duh’s realism begins to shade into symbolic meaning. 

Da-duh is a mythic figure in “To Da-duh, in Memoriam.” For Marshall, Da-duh represents “an ancestor figure, symbolic […] of the long line of black women and men—African and New World—who made [Marshall’s] being possible, and whose sprit [she] believe[s] continues to animate [her] life and work” (95). Da-duh is emblematic of many of the elderly Barbadian women that populate Marshall’s stories, such as “the old hairdresser, Mrs. Thompson, in Brown Girl, Brownstones” (95). As an archetype, Da-duh is fierce, intelligent, powerful, proud, and challenging, and Marshall uses language that emphasizes Da-duh’s mythical qualities. When the narrator first sees Da-duh, she imagines that the old woman will walk past them and “like Christ walk upon the water” (96). Later, after Da-duh’s figurative defeat, the narrator feels that Da-duh’s face looks “like a Benin mask, the features drawn and almost distorted by an ancient abstract sorrow” (104). This reference to a Benin mask connects Da-duh to the family’s African heritage, making her a symbolic ancestor and highlighting Conflict and Cultural Connections Between Generations. The simile implies that Da-duh carries not only the weight of her family’s tragedies on her shoulders, but also the tragedies of all those who came before, including those who were enslaved and taken to Barbados. At the same time, it highlights the gap between those “abstract” tragedies and the narrator’s experiences, itself a source of sorrow for Da-duh.

The cause of Da-duh’s death is ambiguous and, like the rest of her characterization, can be read either literally or figuratively. Da-duh’s health has been in decline for some time when she dies during a flyover by the British military—possibly as a result of the shock, possibly just as a coincidence. Symbolically, the circumstances of Da-duh’s death suggest her inability to resist a rapidly changing world. Machines have become ubiquitous; they can even be seen in the sky above her house, “swooping and screaming like monstrous birds” (106). These technological changes coincide with ideological ones; for instance, younger generations are not content to accept the hierarchies of British colonial rule as Da-duh has. Instead, they protest for better treatment through strike actions. It is notable in this context that she dies in her beloved Berbice chair—also known as a plantation chair. She thus passes away in the seat of the colonial system that she internalized in order to survive.