44 pages • 1 hour read
Everything Inside
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“In The Old Days”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
“In The Old Days” Summary
The narrator of “In the Old Days” is Nadia, a first-generation Haitian American teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. Nadia receives a call from her father’s wife, who says that her father, Maurice, is dying and that he wants to see her. Nadia is surprised; she was raised by a single mother and had grown up believing that her father had abandoned them. Nadia’s mother reveals that Maurice left Brooklyn when Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship ended in 1986, hoping he could help to rebuild the country, and that he was actually unaware that she was pregnant. Wondering whether his decision to leave would have been different if he had known about her, Nadia decides to travel to Miami.
Nadia’s father’s wife does not pick her up from the airport as promised, and when Nadia arrives at the house, the wife does not immediately take Nadia to see him. Instead, she offers Nadia lemonade and answers her questions about their life together in Haiti. She is sympathetic to Nadia’s anger and tells her that her father learned of her existence when she was a teenager. He believed that, by dedicating himself to his work in Haitian schools, he could care for hundreds of children, rather than just one. When Nadia eventually sees her father, he is dead. His wife explains that he died shortly before she arrived, and that she wanted Nadia to be with him before the doctors were called. She explains that, in the old days, Haitians would keep the dead in the home, and that the children of the dead would announce their death. Nadia feels overwhelmed as she says goodbye to her father and frustrated by the knowledge that her mother will not be able to understand her grief. As she embraces her father’s wife, she imagines herself leading a village of mourners, announcing the death of a king.
“In The Old Days” Analysis
The drama of this story comes from the tension between Nadia’s mother’s desire to focus on a new life in America and her father Maurice’s decision to return to Haiti and attempt to rebuild it. This diaspora conflict and ultimately the Resilience of the Haitian Diaspora are represented through the figures of Nadia’s mother and Maurice’s wife. Nadia’s mother’s insistence on focusing on the present means that she rarely engages with Haitian culture “except for the food she served in her restaurant” (61). The story’s emphasis on Nadia’s resemblance to her mother—Nadia describes them as “two nearly identical-looking women” (46)—suggests that Nadia herself is equally estranged from Haitian culture. Nadia’s mother’s patient, almost child-like explanation of the Haitian community’s response to the end of the Duvalier dictatorship— “in the old days, when the dictatorship ended in Haiti, many marriages fell apart here”—implies that Nadia may also be unfamiliar with Haiti’s recent history. Nadia is collateral damage in her mother’s decision to focus fully on her new life in America, even as that choice enabled her to survive the difficulty of living in America and supporting her daughter.
When Nadia visits her father and his wife in Miami, she is immersed in the Haitian culture her father chose to return to. Maurice’s wife’s reflections about the way things were done in “the old days” emphasizes in their personal focus on traditional Haitian culture, especially the spiritual practices that enable her to stay resilient. Her description of how “in the old days, when a baby was born, the midwife would put the baby on the ground, and it was up to the father to pick up the child and claim it as his” (57) is particularly hurtful to Nadia. The description of these traditional rituals highlights Maurice’s absence in Nadia’s life, and she feels his rejection even more strongly. However, Maurice’s wife also tells Nadia that, traditionally, it would be the child’s job to “pronounce my father dead with my bereavement wails to our fellow villagers” (57). Ultimately, Maurice’s wife tells Nadia to bring the doctor in and declare him dead when she is ready, allowing her to participate in this final sacred rite. The story’s final image suggests that Nadia is beginning to engage with Haitian culture more fully: she imagines herself “marching at the head of a king’s funeral procession, with an entire village in my wake” (62). Maurice’s wife’s dedication to Haiti (like Maurice, she left a family behind in America) is what allows Nadia to reconnect with tradition.
Unlock all 44 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Edwidge Danticat
