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 3, Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary: “The Signs”
Part 3 begins as Ti Noël returns to Haiti after having been won in a game of mus. Working for his new enslaver, he has saved up his yearly Christmas bonus and paid his way for passage on a fishing boat. He walks through the countryside talking to inanimate objects, a habit he developed long before. Eventually, he finds several signs that indicate the presence of gods, including Legba. He falls on his knees in gratitude.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary: “Sans-Souci”
Ti Noël arrives at the Lenormand de Mézy plantation, which is now decimated. Several men pass by on horses; intrigued, Ti Noël follows them. He discovers Black men working in an orchard and assumes they are prisoners. Beyond is a pink palace filled with ladies holding fans and the sounds of classical music. Everyone—the ladies, the priests, the butlers—is Black. Ti Noël realizes he is at “Sans-Souci, the favorite residence of King Henri Christophe, who had once been the chef on the Street of the Spaniards” (79). As he marvels, Ti Noël is hit and instructed to go to work carrying bricks. He protests but is struck again and forced to work.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary: “The Sacrifice of the Bulls”
This chapter describes the Citadel of La Ferrière. The high fortress is made of brick made from a mortar that contains the blood of sacrificed bulls. There, Ti Noël realizes that the fortress has been constructed through a new kind of enslavement. He believes this enslavement, in which he must submit to the will of men with skin as dark as his own, is even worse. In addition, it is more brutal, as he is no longer even treated as valuable property. From King Henri Christophe’s perspective, the Citadel is impenetrable: If France ever tries to reconquer the nation, his new subjects will forget the enslavement and rise up to protect a Black king.
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary: “Walled In”
Ti Noël is let go from his work on the Citadel and returns to the Lenormand de Mézy plantation to make it his home. After spending several months there, he goes to the Cap. There, Christophe has ordered the death of the archbishop, his confessor. The archbishop is sealed in his church to die a long, loud death that disrupts everyone in the city. After a week, he dies, and Ti Noël leaves the city, “insulting Henri Christophe, his crown, and his progeny” (90).
Part 3, Chapters 1-4 Analysis
These chapters introduce King Henri Christophe’s reign from Ti Noël’s perspective. Haiti has changed in the intervening years and is now largely free of white enslavers, but a new kind of enslavement has emerged. The description of the finery of Christophe’s pink palace—and its Black ladies and gentlemen—suggests a utopia; the residence’s name even means “without worry.” However, the name quickly proves ironic, and the image of a Black utopia is undercut when Ti Noël is forced into labor once again. Racial Violence Under Enslavement has not ended but merely transformed, as those who were formerly enslaved have absorbed the practices of their former enslavers. Underscoring this are the multiple images of violence and imprisonment in these chapters, including the hitting and whipping of prisoners such as Ti Noël. The image of the palace built with bulls’ blood is another indictment of the new regime’s violence; in their strength and virility, the bulls evoke men like Ti Noël, whose bodies similarly serve as raw material for imperial projects.
Previous sections have shown the shared culture and hope of Black Haitians. They are bound together by their belief in Vodou and the loas as well as in their desire to become free. Christophe now uses this shared culture against those he enslaves: He is convinced that, because of the memory of enslavement under white enslavers as well as the threat of being conquered, he can get away with exceptionally cruel treatment.
Christophe’s abandonment of Vodou embodies his betrayal of his fellow Black Haitians while developing the theme of Catholicism Versus Vodou. At first glance, Ti Noël’s sense of the Vodou gods’ presence upon arriving in Haiti seems bitterly ironic given that Christophe has adopted the religion of the white enslavers. However, the episode proves to foreshadow Cristophe’s downfall. As Carpentier depicts it, Haiti is imbued with spiritual and natural power, and it does not suffer inhabitants to ignore this for long.
