/ MOTIFS / METAPHORS / IMAGERY / SYMBOLS

Other elements that are present in this novel include symbols and metaphors. Symbols are the use of some unrelated idea to represent something else. Metaphors are direct comparisons made between characters and ideas. There many symbols and metaphors used by the author such as:

1. Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital symbolizes outside help for the poor.

2. Kidder, the author, has arrived in Haiti to see Farmer's oeuvre. He is met at the Port-au-Prince airport by a four-wheel-drive pickup and rides on a two-lane paved road until he comes to the other side of the Plaine du Cul-de-Sac. There, the truck moves steadily upward, while pitching and rolling, along a road that seems little more than a dry riverbed. Along the way, he sees many arid mountains and villages of wooden huts, trucks of various sizes and a lot of foot traffic, beggars, ox carts being pulled by men, few trees, and no electricity after the town of Péligre. The trip is only 35 miles long, but lasts three hours. Finally, kidder's truck pulls up to a tall concrete wall where a sign reads, Zanmi Lasante, or Partners In Health. It is a very dramatic sight in the all but treeless, baked brown landscape. There are tall trees beside courtyards, walkways, and walls, an ambulatory clinic and a women's clinic, a general hospital, a large Anglican church, a school, a kitchen which prepares meals for 2000 people a day, and a brand new building to treat tuberculosis. Inside, the building has tiled floors, clean white walls, and paintings by Haitian artists. This is a metaphor for all of Haiti where Zanmi Lasante is hope in the midst of despair.

3. Farmer's use of the word comma at the end of a sentence symbolizes the word that would follow the comma - asshole. Kidder understands that Farmer isn't calling him an asshole, but instead is referring to third parties who feel comfortable with the current distribution of money and medicine in the world. And implication is that you aren't one of those. Are you?

4. A moaning thirteen-year-old has arrived by donkey ambulance. Paul must give her a spinal tap and when he inserts the needle, she cries out in Creole that it hurts and she is hungry. This is a metaphor for the entire country that cries out for food.

5. The truck was carrying people and mangoes to market and because it was overloaded, it couldn't master the turn. The people stand beside the road in shock while one of the women lies dead on a bed of the fruit, a piece of corrugated cardboard laying over her. This is metaphor for the country which often faces death in search of life.

6. Farmer was struck by his memories of the tin roofs he'd seen in Mirebalais which were emblems of poverty. The roofs in Cange screamed misery.

7. Farmer, will be Kidder's Virgil - tutoring him in the complexities of Haiti. He symbolizes the great philosopher.

8. The Péligre dam is a subject that Farmer has discussed in all of his books and many of his journal articles. It symbolizes the misery of the central plateau part of which was destroyed when the dam was built.)

9. Chouchou Louis is a metaphor for Haiti. In a moment of freedom, he speaks disparagingly about his country and is then beaten to death. In the same way, Haiti rises up to grab freedom momentarily and then is beaten back into submission.

10. The epi line is a shortened version of the epidemiological line, an idea which symbolizes those who receive good health care and live fairly well to those who die in poverty.

11. DOTS-plus symbolizes the knowledge that TB can be treated by the tradition protocols while also treating the more serious MDR-TB.

12. Farmer carries two pictures of children with him: one is of Catherine and the other is of a Haitian child with kwashiorkor. The second picture is a symbol of all the people suffering from TB and perhaps his willingness to try to love them all equally.

13. The entire chapter about John is a metaphor for the disaster named Haiti - not enough or no medicines to help a child struck ill and too great a difficulty getting him out of Haiti to save his life.

14. A good cast of the net is a metaphor for fishing, something Farmer often uses both positively as here and negatively when talking about the lack opportunities for Haitians.

15. Farmer is the single stethoscope under which beat many hearts.

 

IMAGERY

Another element that is very dominant in this novel is imagery - the employment of figures of speech, vivid descriptions, or mental pictures in writing or speech. Much of the imagery in this book comes from the language Farmer uses. Some examples include:

1. Farmer's use of the word comma at the end of a sentence. It stands for the word that would follow the comma - asshole. Kidder understands that Farmer isn't calling him an asshole, but instead is referring to third parties who feel comfortable with the current distribution of money and medicine in the world. And implication is that you aren't one of those. Are you?

2. A dismount is a term used in Farmer's family when they became interested in gymnastics during the Olympics.

To them and to Farmer, a dismount is the term meaning the end of the conversation.

3. Bwats (French boîtes or boxes) are Paul's way of referring to his checklist he makes for each day's chores he wants to complete.

4. H of G or hermeneutic of generosity, means whether Farmer looks upon something in a generous light, just the way he feels about Kidder.

5. Farmer has a strange lexicon, a language that the PIHers have picked up on and follow perfectly. For example, when his brother Jeff misspelled Haitians as Hatians, Farmer began to shorten it to Hateans or Hats and their country became Hatland. The French were Fran-chayze and their tongue Fran-chayze language. The Russians were Rooskies. Farmer calls himself white trash and even though he has the utmost respect for women, he still calls them chicks. People of the same race and gender who suffer because of it have different degrees of shaftedness or hose-edness. To commit a seven-three was to use seven words when three would do, and ninety-nine one hundred was quitting on a nearly complete job, something he hated more than anything else.

6. O for the P refers to the options available to the poor.

7. PIHers are people who work for Partners In Health.