The Kingdom Of This World

“Ti Noël distracted himself by thinking that the heads of white gentlemen were being served at the same table as the discolored veal heads. Just as fowl were adorned with their feathers when served to diners at a banquet, so it seemed that an expert and rather grotesque chef had dressed the human heads with the most gloriously arranged wigs. All they needed was a bed of lettuce or radishes cut in the shape of fleur-de-lys as adornment.”

This passage reveals Ti Noël’s true feelings toward Lenormand de Mézy and is representative of the text’s style. While Lenormand de Mézy trusts him, Ti Noël fantasizes about the enslaver as a slaughtered animal served at a banquet, demonstrating his deep hatred of de Mézy and of his own enslavement. The style of this passage is, just like the banquet Ti Noël imagines, “grotesque,” describing in detail the violence that enslavement engenders and thus introducing the theme of Racial Violence Under Enslavement.

“Kings they were, true kings, and not those sovereigns covered with someone else’s hair, who played lawn games and only knew how to be gods in the theatrics of the court, showing their girlish legs to the rhythm of a rigadoon.”

Ti Noël thinks of the kings of Africa and compares them to the French nobility, which he derides: The latter are involved in mere games, and they are described as “girlish.” Their lack of seriousness, masculinity, and godly stature contrasts with the power of the African kings who fight in their own wars.

“He was surprised to learn the secret life of unique plant species, given to disguise, confusion, and the greenest of greens, friends to the little armored creatures that avoided the ant paths [...] But Macandal was even more interested in mushrooms.”

After losing his arm, Macandal is newly attuned to The Power of Nature. He realizes the ability of plants to disguise, confuse, and protect: exactly the qualities he needs to lead a successful rebellion. His interest in mushrooms is foreshadowing that explains the plague that follows.

“The master organized a search party, simply to set an example for the blacks, even though they didn’t put much effort into it. A one-armed slave was of little value. Besides, it was well-known that every Mandingo hid in him a potential runaway. To say ‘Mandingo’ was to say rebellious, unruly, demonic.”

This passage demonstrates some of the racist thinking of the enslavers, as well as their lack of understanding. They think of Macandal only in terms of his value to them with one arm; they do not consider the risk that he might pose to them, both as someone who has successfully liberated himself and as an individual with powers that even they view as potentially supernatural (i.e., “demonic”).

“The only prayer hard in the churches of the Cap was the Office of the Dead, and the extreme unction arrived always too late, accompanied by distant bells that tolled for the newly dead. The priests had to quicken their Latin to attend to all the mourning families.”

This passage describes the devastation wrought by Macandal’s poison. Its language presents a country where so many are dying that death bells constantly ring, and priests run from house to house praying in Latin. It is consistent with Carpentier’s dark magical realism, and it also highlights the powerlessness of the Church, developing the theme of Catholicism Versus Vodou.

“[T]he blacks told each other the strangest news with great joy: a green iguana was seen warming itself on the roof of the tobacco barn; someone had seen a nocturnal butterfly at midday; a large dog with bristled hair had raced across the house, stealing a deer leg; a garnet had shaken its wings and dropped its lice on the vine trellis of the backyard.”

These are all images of Macandal transfigured into an animal. Some of them suggest a disruption in the status quo—for instance, a nocturnal butterfly at midday—signaling the chaos Macandal has brought to the enslavers. That Macandal could be all of these animals also paints him as omnipresent—another source of the joy and hope the Black Haitians feel.

“At the right moment, the ropes around the Mandingo, now loose around his body, would draw for a moment the outline of a manmade air, before slipping down the length of the pole. And the Mandingo, transformed into a buzzing mosquito, would go to rest on the tricorn of the captain of the troop to better enjoy the bewilderment of the whites.”

The enslaved Haitians imagine what Macandal will do when tied to the stake. The image of the mosquito is particularly notable: They believe he can make himself small and undetectable. The fact that mosquitos can cause death and are impossible to exterminate symbolizes the power that exists among enslaved people, which Macandal’s actions have revealed.

“[A]fter a few months, a growing nostalgia for sun, space, for abundance, for dominion, and for black women lying on the edges of a pasture revealed to him that the ‘return to France’ for which he’d been working all these years was no longer the key to his happiness.”

After traveling to France, Lenormand de Mézy discovers that he prefers life in the colonies. It is suggested that the “keys to happiness” for white colonizers are the ability to dominate and rape (39).

“The god of the whites demands crime. Our gods seek vengeance. They will guide our arms to give us aid. Break the image of the god of the whites, who thirsts for our tears, and let us hear inside us the call to freedom!”

This quote, spoken by Bouckman the Jamaican, contrasts the Christian god and the Vodou gods. He suggests that enslavement is consistent with the teachings of Christianity and that the suffering of enslaved people appeases the enslavers’ God. The vengeful Vodou gods, by contrast, will work for the enslaved Haitians’ freedom.

“It was as if all the shells of the coast, the Indian seashell horns, the shells used as doorstops, and the shells that lay solitary and petrified on the mountaintops had come together in a choir.”

Lenormand de Mézy hears Bouckman’s signal. The sheer number of shell horns he hears suggests the scale of enslavement in Haiti, as well as the size of the rebellion. The personification of the shells—the image of them coming alive as a choir—also underscores the close relationship between the Black Haitians and the natural world.

“A terrible stench came from the burned-out dog kennels: there the blacks had paid back an old debt, smearing the doors with tar so that not a single animal would remain alive.”

Lenormand de Mézy surveys his property after Bouckman’s rebellion. The rebels have put special effort into killing the dogs that chased and bit them. While Vodou generally reveres the natural world, dogs have incurred a “debt” of death and suffering that must be repaid.

“Pauline felt a mischievous pleasure in rubbing against his strong flanks under the water. She knew the servant was constantly tormented by desire and looked at her sideways with the false meekness of a dog that’s been beaten too much.”

Pauline is the only female character whose perspective is explored at length, and she has a different attitude toward her enslaved workers than the male slavers do. Rather than using direct, physical cruelty, she tortures Soliman with sexual desire. The image of the dog appears here, though here as a metaphor for the status of an enslaved person.

“In the basket containing her shabby Creole costumes was also an amulet to Papa Legba made by Soliman, destined to open for Pauline Bonaparte all the roads that led to Rome.”

At the end of her time in Haiti, the fine garments Pauline looked forward to wearing are shabby. Other things about her have transformed as well: She now embraces Vodou beliefs, carrying an amulet that brings her good fortune.

“But what surprised Ti Noël the most was the discovery that this marvelous world was a world of blacks such as the French governors had never known. Blacks were the beautiful ladies, with firm behinds, who were now dancing the rondeau around a fountain of Tritons; black were those ministers in white stockings who descended the grand stairs with sheepskin purses under their arms; black was the cook […].”

Ti Noël admires King Christophe’s kingdom, where the aristocracy is entirely Black and engaged in courtly pursuits. This image is to Ti Noël “marvelous.” Of course, he mocked these same pursuits when the enslavers engaged in them, and the fact that those they formerly enslaved have now adopted European practices foreshadows their participation in enslavement.

“[T]he black man began to think that the chamber orchestras of Sans-Souci, the fancy uniforms, and the statues of white nudes warming in the sun on their ornamental bases amid the boxwood hedges of the flower beds were the result of a slavery as abominable as the one he had known in the plantation owned by Monsieur Lenormand de Mézy.”

Ti Noël comes to see that the courtly pursuits of the Black aristocracy are enabled by enslavement. The white statues suggest that this kingdom aspires to whiteness even at the cost of cruelty and human suffering.

“No one had the courage, even, to make mention of what was happening because the Capuchin who’d been immured inside the Archbishopric, buried alive in his chapel, was not other than Corneille Breille, the Duke of Anse, confessor of Henri Christophe.”

This passage reveals Christophe’s cruelty. His archbishop is entombed to die with his wails echoing down the streets of the city. No one is willing to comment on it, as the archbishop is being punished for performing his duty: taking Christophe’s confession. They worry they might be punished for far less.

“Weaving drunkenly under the light of the moon, he took the way back, vaguely remembering a song from earlier times that he would always sing when returning from the city, a song that was loaded with insults to a king. That was the important thing: to a king.”

Ti Noël makes his way back to the plantation via a familiar road. His feelings of contempt and hatred for the king are also familiar. He realizes that all kings, Black or white, deserve insults for their cruelty and abuses of power.

“The unturned drums were not playing the regimental rhythm but were falling into three different percussive movements, no longer produced by the sticks but by hands beating directly on their skins.”

Drums are often the herald of revolution in this book. Here, the well-trained band of Christophe breaks from the beats they have been taught to play, suggesting that another rebellion is on the horizon.

“Christophe the reformer had wanted to ignore Vodou, creating a caste of Catholic gentlemen by force of the whip. Now he understood that the true traitors to his cause that night were Saint Peter with his key, the Capuchins of Saint Francis, the black Saint Benedict […].”

Christophe realizes that his embrace of Catholicism has been for naught. He sees that he has imposed the religion only to have the god he worshipped betray him. His betrayal of Vodou will in turn have consequences.

“When he sweated, there was always someone who wanted to pat his cheeks with a handkerchief to see if the color came off.”

Soliman travels to Rome and experiences his Blackness differently. While it made him a target of cruelty in Haiti, he is now an object of curiosity, though that curiosity is itself degrading and racist.

“He gave away baronies, offered garlands, and blessed young girls, paying services rendered with flowers. In this manner he founded the Order of the Bitter Broom, the Order of the Christmas Bonus […].”

Ti Noël rules over his new “kingdom.” His behavior might suggest mental illness, but it is also a parody of the power that kings possess and exercise. His playfulness also suggests that he has finally found freedom.

“Macandal had never foreseen the matter of forced labor. Neither had Bouckman the Jamaican […]. Certainly not even Henri Christophe could have guessed the lands of Saint-Domingue were to foster an aristocracy between two waters, this quadroon caste that was now taking over the old plantations […].”

The Black Haitian revolutionaries always saw the struggle on their island as a struggle between Black and white. Now, with the influx of surveyors of multiracial heritage forcing dark-skinned Blacks into service, the caste system is more complex than previous revolutionaries foresaw.

“The old man was beginning to get desperate seeing this unending return of chains, this rebirth of shackles, this proliferation of miseries, which the least hope accepted as proof of the uselessness of any sort of revolt.”

Ti Noël begins to lose hope in the possibility of true freedom. Having lived a long life and seen many revolutions, he has also seen power and cruelty reinsert themselves into each.