45 pages • 1 hour read
Edwidge DanticatKrik? Krak!
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1996A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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“The Missing Peace” Summary
Lamort (French for “death”), a 14-year-old girl, is with her older boyfriend Raymond in an empty field behind a schoolhouse. Raymond, a soldier, attempts physical intimacy with Lamort, and, as a distraction, she asks him to tell her the story of how he got shot. During the coup in Port-au-Prince, Raymond was wearing the wrong uniform, and was shot in the leg by a friend, Toto. Raymond’s life was saved when he recited a password that identified him as a member of the new regime. Raymond asks Lamort to repeat the password: peace. As she does, gunshots are fired to signal the start of curfew.
As she walks home, Lamort passes a churchyard where soldiers often bury the bodies of dissidents. The graves in the churchyard are so shallow that body parts are sometimes visible poking through the ground. Lamort picks some red hibiscus flowers, and quickly returns home. When she arrives, her grandmother throws out the flowers, claiming that they grow with blood on them. She tells Lamort that a boarder has rented the yellow house next door, and asks her to bring the boarder, a young American woman named Emilie, a needle and thread. Lamort asks her grandmother a number of questions; the grandmother encourages her to stay quiet.
In the yellow house, Emilie offers Lamort cookies and asks about the origins of her name. Lamort explains that her grandmother named her “death” after her mother died in childbirth. Emilie says that they should have given Lamort her mother’s name. Lamort says that her name was Marie Magdalène. Emilie explains that she is in Ville Rose searching for her mother, who was believed to be there on the night of the coup. After studying a picture, Lamort says that she has never seen the woman, but agrees to take Emilie to the graveyard to look for her. As curfew approaches, Lamort’s grandmother comes looking for her; Lamort hides, and Emilie denies having seen her.
On their way to the graveyard, Emilie tells Lamort that she has a reputation among journalists as a guide to Ville Rose. Lamort asks Emile what she plans to do when she finds her mother, but Emilie has no response. The women are stopped by Raymond’s friend Toto, who encourages them to go home. When two more soldiers pass by carrying a bloody body, Toto tells the girls to act as if they see nothing. Emilie pushes back, and Toto threatens to shoot her. Lamort begins desperately repeating the password that Raymond gave her in an attempt to stop the violence. Raymond appears and convinces Toto to let them go. As they leave, Raymond tells Lamort that the password has changed. Back at the yellow house, Emilie offers to pay Lamort to stay with her until the morning. Lamort agrees, acknowledging Emilie’s fear.
The next morning, Emilie asks Lamort the names of the soldiers who stopped them the night before. Emilie writes their names, Raymond and Toto, on the back of a picture of her mother, Isabelle. She asks Lamort to keep the picture for posterity. Lamort returns home, and demands that her grandmother call her Marie Magdalène.
“The Missing Peace” Analysis
In “The Missing Peace,” the characters of Lamort (also known as Marie Magdalène) and Emilie act as foils to each other, demonstrating the profound impact of Gendered Violence and Female Solidarity on Haitian women and girls. Lamort is 14 years old, closely watched over by her grandmother, and displays a remarkable naivete about the violence of Ville Rose; nevertheless, she has developed practical skills necessary to survive as a woman in the midst of that violence. Lamort’s frequent repetition of her grandmother’s sayings—such as “intelligence is not only in reading and writing” (107, 111) and “things you say, thoughts you have, will decide how people treat you” (107, 110)—indicates that she has not yet developed an independent worldview. As a young girl, Lamort is still deeply influenced by her grandmother. Despite her naivete, this influence helps to protect Lamort from the sexual dangers that plague girls and women in Haiti. When Raymond, an older soldier, tries to pressure Lamort into sex, she heeds her grandmother’s warning that “I can have babies” (104) and asks Raymond questions about his injury “to distract him” (104) and to offer “a chance for him to show his bravery” (104). This interaction suggests that, despite her naivete, Lamort has developed important survival skills as a result of the violence around her.
Emilie differs from Lamort in many ways. Lamort’s grandmother says that, like all foreign women, “she feels she can be alone” (107) safely as a traveler in Haiti. Although the story indicates that her mother, a Haitian woman named Isabella, died in the coup, Emilie feels empowered to travel alone in Haiti. Ultimately, she lacks the experience and survival skills necessary to safely navigate Ville Rose. Although Lamort warns her not to make eye contact with the soldiers, Emilie—empowered by her upbringing in America—talks back to Toto when he stops them, and resists his call for them to ignore nearby soldiers carrying a bloody body. When Toto threatens to shoot her, she is “angry and stunned” (118) rather than scared. Emilie’s initial confidence as an American is tempered by her lack of survival skills. The story implies that Emilie might not have survived if not for Lamort’s intervention. The tension between Lamort’s experience and Emilie’s misplaced confidence demonstrates how deeply the violence of life in Haiti can affect girls and women and the importance of female solidarity and community.
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By Edwidge Danticat
