The Great Divide

Omar is the 17-year-old son of Francisco. A native-born Panamanian like his father, his presence in the narrative restores focus on the lived experience of working-class Panamanians during the construction of the Panama Canal. The stories of countless men like Omar, who became a laborer on the canal project, have been overlooked in accounts of the canal’s construction that foreground the role of diplomats, statesmen, and the architects of the project. In addition to Omar’s symbolic role within the novel, he is significant because of his desire for belonging and community, his relationship with Ada Bunting, and his shifting perspective on what the canal means for Panama and its people.

Omar, more than any other character, embodies the cost of the Panama Canal for actual Panamanians and the labor injustices that the project brought to the area. Although Omar is initially happy to sign onto the project and welcomes the spirit of camaraderie that he finds among the other construction workers, he is witness to some of the struggles that were common during the canal’s construction. His foreman Miller is a cruel, racist man who hits Omar in the face after Omar bears witness to him working a Panamanian man to death. That Omar is willing to stand up to Miller evidences his burgeoning sense of social justice and speaks to his complexity of character: Although Omar has enjoyed his work on the canal so far, he realizes that it is an oppressive project and that the mostly white foremen take advantage of the workers of color.

Omar initially seeks employment on the canal project out of a desire for friendship and community, and that orientation toward others is also evident in his friendship with Ada. Although the two ultimately spend very little time together before being forced to part, there is the definite sense that their connection is real and that it goes beyond Omar’s gratitude for Ada having saved his life. He sees in her a kindred spirit and genuinely cares about her wellbeing and the wellbeing of her ailing sister, Millicent. Cristina Henríquez further explores the power of community through Omar’s willingness to forgive his father after months of silence. He realizes that his father’s opinion on the construction of the canal is rooted in a deep understanding about Panamanian politics and history and looks beyond his father’s mistreatment. That he ultimately chooses to retrain as an educator reinforces the importance that he places on human connection and community. He begins the novel by noting that he wants “to give purpose to his purposeless days, to be around people and stop feeling lonely so much of the time” (37), and by its conclusion he has achieved those goals.

Ada is a 16-year-old girl from Barbados with a Black mother and a white father. She sneaks aboard a ship bound for Panama to find work. Ada is independent, intelligent, and forms easy friendships with like-minded people. She is caring and comes to the aid of multiple people during times of illness. In addition to these traits, Ada is characterized through her biracial heritage and the way that it speaks to the theme of Racism and the Legacy of Enslavement.

Ada is introduced initially through her willingness to sneak aboard a mail-carrying ship bound for Panama to increase her job options. Her sister, Millicent, needs a costly surgery that her mother cannot afford. Because of the canal project, work is easier to find in Panama, and so Ada heads there. This portion of the narrative roots it in the real-life history of the Caribbean and Latin America during the years surrounding the canal project. Although there was a sizeable Panamanian workforce already, the availability of jobs caused an uptick in immigration, and workers like Ada came from all over the Caribbean to find work in Panama.

Ada is comfortable traveling alone, and even when her journey becomes difficult, Ada perseveres. She finds a job with the Oswalds because John sees her tending to a sick man in the street, and she brings that same caring spirit to Marian Oswald. She is adept at preparing home remedies and has a wide body of knowledge about the healing properties of various plants. It is through this interest in the natural world and her innate intelligence that she bonds with Marian. Marian is a trained botanist and an intellectual woman herself, and in Ada she recognizes a kindred spirit. That Ada ultimately begins an apprenticeship of sorts with a local Black doctor in Barbados is a natural progression, for she has demonstrated not only intelligence and knowledge of medicine but also the ability to care for and connect with patients. Her character arc highlights a network of Black medical professionals in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ada is the product of a relationship between a Black woman and her wealthy, white employer. These kinds of unions were common during enslavement—when slavery partly subsisted on enslavers forcing Black women to bear their children—and the years that followed, and Ada’s parentage speaks to the history of race and racism in the Caribbean. Ada is both lauded for having lighter skin than her mother and stigmatized for being the illegitimate child of a forbidden relationship between a white man and a Black woman, both of which highlight the white supremacy prevailing in the region.

John Oswald is in Panama to oversee the Board of Health’s laboratories. As the youngest son from a wealthy family, he has always been something of an outcast. His siblings were keen to jump into their family’s many businesses, but John’s interest in medicine set him apart. He is characterized in part through the difficulty he has in establishing and maintaining relationships, through his interest in career and medicine, and through the way that he embodies the racial and sociopolitical climate of Panama in the early 20th century.

John is introduced initially through his privilege. Born into an affluent, Southern family, he is accustomed to wealth and ease. And yet, he has also always struggled socially. John’s dedication to medicine rather than his father’s sizeable business empire creates distance between him and his family, and even in the early days of his marriage to Marian he recalls feeling out of place in his home and his family. He struggles also with Marian. He is cold toward her, and they experience difficulty in their sexual relationship. Marian feels that John does not truly care about her and that his interest in her is limited to shared passions. He does not quite want to get to know Marian as a person, but he is willing to talk to her about plants, science, and medicine. She observes that “[h]e was interested in science even if he was not interested in her” (23). John’s difficulties continue in Panama. Although he is respected for the role that he is playing in eradicating malaria, he develops the reputation of being difficult to talk to, and he is not popular socially. John is hence partly antagonistic and partly sympathetic, as an outsider who also harms others.

John is an intelligent man, however, and he is deeply committed to fighting disease in the tropics. He is an expert on mosquitos, and his research does not eradicate malaria by the novel’s conclusion (nor does it save his wife), but he does make progress. Nevertheless, John’s position as a scientist is complicated by the era’s politics of race and place. Like many other white men in Latin America, he views the region through a distorted lens. He sees Panama as a swampy backwater and sees himself as a civilizing force. This means that his view of the locals is prejudicial and that his view of himself is messianic: He aims to “save” the Panamanian population from themselves because he sees them as being too uneducated to advance their own society. This attitude is representative of many of the white men and women who descended upon Panama during the canal construction years and is another manifestation of the imperialist nature of US involvement in Central America during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Marian is married to John Oswald. Their union is a difficult one, and Marian feels stifled by her marriage. As a trained botanist, she had hoped to obtain a job after finishing her studies, but John did not see the use in her finding work outside of the home. More than anything, Marian embodies this novel’s exploration of the politics of gender: Like each of the other female characters she is intelligent, strong-willed, independent, and seeks identity beyond the patriarchal roles of wife and mother.

Marian is both highly intelligent and highly educated. She has a degree in botany and matches her husband in intellect and scientific acumen. Although John stifles her career, Marian remains committed to the idea that women should be allowed self-determination. Marian “resented the notion that it was difficult for a woman to matter much outside of marriage” (22). Much of her inner dialogue is focused on this idea, and it is apparent that Marian has strong opinions on marriage and gender roles.

Although Marian’s critique of patriarchal marital structures is rooted in part in her own desire for independence and a career, it is also the result of her own troubled relationship with John. Their lack of connection does not seem to trouble him, but Marian envisioned something different for herself when they got married. She is the one to initiate all their sexual activity, but even those encounters leave her feeling lonely because John still seems distant to her, even when they are together in bed. Marian’s inability to bear children also pains her, and she emerges as a character unfulfilled in multiple areas of her life.

Although she and John do not connect, she does connect with Ada. The two share an interest in science and an emotional intelligence that John lacks. Even beyond her friendship with Ada, Marian’s character reflects the other female figures in the novel. Each of them in some way seeks a life beyond the traditional boundaries of what is deemed acceptable for women of their era: Lucille seeks self-determination through her move away from the sugar estate; Valentina becomes a community organizer against imperialist oppression; Ada’s independence, work ethic, and ability to care for others set her apart and eventually propel her toward her own career in medicine. Marian’s interest in gender equality and the rights of women ties these threads together and roots the novel in a spirit of women’s empowerment.