36 pages • 1 hour read
Alejo CarpentierThe Kingdom Of This World
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë”
This chapter picks up 20 years later: Lenormand de Mézy’s second wife has died. He met an actress, Mademoiselle Floridor, traveled back to France with her, discovered he missed Haiti, and returned with her. Ti Noël has fathered 12 children but still travels to the Cap to shop on Lenormand de Mézy’s behalf. There, he passes the restaurant Auberge de la Couronne, owned by Black master chef Henri Christophe.
Meanwhile, the enslaved workers resent both Lenormand de Mézy and Mademoiselle Floridor for their abusiveness. Ti Noël passes Macandal’s tales—and his hopes—down to his children.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “The Great Covenant”
Ti Noël attends a gathering of enslaved Haitians headed by a man named Bouckman the Jamaican. The enslaved people have learned that France has decreed that they should be freed—and that the enslavers in Haiti have not obeyed this edict. Bouckman tells the others, “The god of the whites demands crime. Our gods seek vengeance” (43). Together, they chant to Ogun, sacrifice a pig, and swear loyalty to Bouckman. Ti Noël swims back across the river to the plantation.
Part 2, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Call of the Conch Shells”
Lenormand de Mézy is in a terrible mood after learning his enslaved workers should be freed. Then, the sound of conch shells resonates across the coast. Black Haitians storm the plantation, killing Lenormand de Mézy’s accountant. Some run toward the main house, but most head toward the cellar to find liquor, feasting on dried fish and drinking wine. Ti Noël heads up to the second floor, “followed by his oldest sons,” all “eager to rape” Mademoiselle Floridor (48).
Part 2, Chapter 4 Summary: “Dagon Inside the Ark”
Lenormand de Mézy hides for two days and emerges to find burned-out dog kennels and Mademoiselle Floridor dead. He begins praying, but a messenger arrives, telling him that Bouckman has been killed and that the rebels are being subdued. The enslavers hope to kill them all, especially because the rebels have raped so many women. In the Cap, he finds Ti Noël and several other of his enslaved workers. The governor is hesitant to give Lenormand de Mézy back the men he claims as his property because the governor is afraid they will work Vodou. He goes to have a drink at the Auberge de la Couronne and remembers that Henri Christophe left to join the army. Lenormand de Mézy plans to leave for Cuba.
Part 2, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
Part 2 begins with what is almost a repetition of Macandal’s rebellion: 20 years later, the enslaved people of Haiti once again have hope. Bouckman, like Macandal, is a powerful orator who inspires solidarity among Black Haitians and encourages them to rebel. Also like Macandal, he pits their gods against the Christian god and suggests that their gods will prevail, developing the theme of Catholicism Versus Vodou in tandem with the exploration of Racial Violence Under Enslavement.
This time, however, the rebellion fails much more quickly. It is also marked by more sexual violence than Macandal’s, emphasizing the link between Ti Noël’s selfhood and his virility. This section emphasizes that he has fathered 12 children. As a man who cannot own property (and who is property), passing on his bloodline is important to his self-understanding—as is passing on hope and Vodou lore. This impulse turns violent, though, during the revolution, when he and his sons all rape Mademoiselle Floridor—and, it is implied, kill her. The idea that Black men pose a threat to white women is a recurring trope in anti-Black racism, but as with the violence against the white characters broadly, Carpentier roots his characters’ actions in the violence of enslavement. The rape of Mademoiselle Floridor is spurred not only by Ti Noël’s sense of emasculation (exacerbated by the fact that the force behind that emasculation, Lenormand de Mézy, is in Ti Noël’s eyes hardly a man at all) but also by the sexual violence that Carpentier implies de Mézy has perpetrated against enslaved women. As Bouckman says, their response to “crime” will be “vengeance.”
These chapters also introduce Henri Christophe as a Black master chef. Readers familiar with Haiti’s historical events will note that this character becomes the leader of a successful revolt of enslaved persons and then the first king of Haiti.
