The Importance of Soucouyant’s Reading, Writing, and Language

The title of David Chariandy’s book, Soucouyant

The title of David Chariandy’s book, Soucouyant, refers to an evil spirit in the form of a vampire-like elderly woman who sucks blood from humans. As a result, the novel depicts several examples of experiences with nefarious occurrences, such as a Soucouyant worth forgetting. The book depicts acts of “forgetting” in the form of diseases such as dementia, as well as a culture of leaving behind the wounds, pain, errors, sins, and dark memories. When one reads this novel, they learn to use reading and writing as a form of expressing their past experiences whether nasty or worth remembering, and making a selection of what to keep in their minds and what to forget completely to help them progress in life.

Identifying with one’s culture and past

Writing and reading Soucouyant is useful in informing the importance of identifying with one’s culture and past to have a tangible origin. The narrator in Soucouyant is considered a prodigal son who has run away from home. Two years later, he went back home to stay with his ailing mother who is suffering from dementia. Although the son claims not to have been invited back home, it is of importance since he wants to get an understanding of his mother’s past so that he can know his history too. There were difficulties of learning his past since it seems his mother deliberately chose not to explain it to him. Nevertheless, the narrator makes efforts and gets to know about his mother’s encounter with a Soucouyant from his mother’s interspersed memories and the narration from Meera, the nurse, about his mother’s past.

Forgetting one’s history and tradition

Further, it is evident from the novel that forgetting one’s history and tradition is significant and enables a person to lead a positive life in a new locality. In Soucouyant, the narrator’s mother, Adele who is a Trinidadian immigrant, is said to have experienced a lot of suffering in her past. The narrator says, “…she saw sadness and anxiety. She saw violence. She saw war.” (161). She experienced being, “…dragged like a doll toward the gates of the base, back toward the village and the life that awaits…” (192). In addition, she is said to have suffered from discrimination in her place of birth due to being a dark woman. The narrator’s mother chooses forgetting as the “most creative and life-sustaining thing” (32) as a way to deal with her past.

The consequences of forgetting

Additionally, the frequent use of the phrase “a path so old that none could remember its origins” (45, 173, 190) can be said to symbolize the suffering that Adele has gone through which had been the norm in her homeland. She tries to forget everything that has occurred in her past. She resolved not to remember all the dark events that happened in her life. In this effort, her memory may have been affected leading to her suffering from dementia. Although the real reason for her dementia is not known, the narrator recounts that she began to forget a long time ago. From forgetting ordinary things, she began forgetting in a creative way the “…names and places, goals and meanings. She began to forget the laws of language and the routes to salvation and the proper things to do with one’s body. She began to excuse herself from the world we knew” (12).

The importance of forgetting the past

Through becoming forgetful, Adele wants to keep off all the memories of her past since it’s the only way life at present can have meaning. This shows that there comes a time in life when one needs to forget completely their past if that shall give a better experience to their lives in an effort to foster a different life ahead.

Choosing what to remember and forget

Again, one understands that learning to forget the hurts and pain of the past is important to lose the connection with the past. When the past is signified with horrible happenings or secrets that are not easy to explain like it is for Adele, forgetting is a good way to keep off from them. For Adele, she goes further to even forget her memory completely. “She tells me now that she doesn’t understand that thing called memory. She doesn’t understand its essence or dynamic” (166). However, she seems to selectively choose between what to remember and forget further telling us that not everything from our past can be forgotten no matter how hard we try to forget. “She never forgets. But I don’t remember it. Not even a little bit. I remember something else from that trip, though” (196). It is wise not to forget the pleasant things from our lives while the traumatic and nasty experiences are unworthy of keeping in the mind.

The consequences of leaving home

Moreover, one learns that forgetting our homes while nothing horrible has happened is discouraged since home is always the best. When the narrator chooses to run away from his father and mother by running away from home, he brings suffering and disturbance to the parents. The mother is said to have “staggered into forgetfulness. She wandered the streets of our neighborhood and upturned people’s garbage bins” (18). The father is said to have stopped communicating with the mother. At the city he had run to, the narrator, however, did not enjoy comfort like he had anticipated. He only found old jobs of washing dishes in the restaurants and selling flowers during the holidays. The money he got was not sufficient for his needs and he had to opt to go back home.

The importance of knowing one’s history

Back at home, he is said to have tried to understand his history and roots in the awakening of the realization that, “Your history is your blood and flesh” (137). Even though the mother is not capable of explaining to him what he wants to know, with the help of Miss, he gets to know the details of his mother’s life. He gets to discover some of the horrible things his mother went through in her past and admits that truly, “it is possible to live with almost no memories” (54). By getting back home, the narrator is able to learn his mother’s transgressions which are a good starting point to understand her sickness and look for better medication for her.

Starting a new life

Still, one learns that forgetting the evil acts of oneself in the past and leading a completely different life is required for progress. Meera, the nurse, seems to be determined to completely forget her past. When the narrator brings his mother to her, she unbelievably asks, “You fetched my mother?” (124). Her mother calls her name severally but she appears passive about it clearly showing her dislike for her mother. For the narrator though, bringing the mother was the only way he could have evoked Meera to speak out of her past, “I don’t care, Meera. It doesn’t matter to me. I just wanted to know more about you. I thought we could talk about things” (125).

Escaping from the past

Evidently, the persuasion the narrator seems to advance in order to provoke an explanation from Meera clearly shows that she is not willing to share her past. She had a lot to hide from people since she wants to forget, and later on, it emerges that she used to “…crank call the wandering lady” (159). “Many times, Meera’s calls were stupidly banal. Giggling requests to speak to Oliver Clothes off” (160). When she later on became a nurse, she wants to forget these mistakes and sins she did in the past and become a new responsible person in her role as a nurse. She is the one tending to the “wandering lady” who in the past she would make “crank calls”.

Reflecting on the past

Through reading, writing, and discussions, a person can learn to escape from repulsive pasts. Escaping from one’s past comes with both advantages and disadvantages too. It is evident from the novel, “During our lives, we struggle to forget. And it’s foolish to assume that forgetting is altogether a bad thing. Memory is a bruise still tender” (32). When a person wants to move away from their past, they need to forget the evil events that took place in their past but be careful not to do so at the expense of progressing ahead. As can be seen, the narrator was not able to succeed in his new life at the city and had to come back home in order to succeed in life. For Meera, abandoning her mother too was not required to make her life successful. At her point of dire need, her mother required her help as a nurse and helper.

Learning from past mistakes

Also, when one reads Soucouyant, they learn that when one chooses to forget their past mistakes they get a better opportunity to do self-reflection and identify areas of weaknesses. When the narrator is at the city doing old jobs away from home, he considers this the best option in life. The expenses at the city are far more overstretching and he finds it difficult to pay the house rent. He lacks a satisfactorily good reason for quitting home and when life becomes unbearable; he finds comfort back at his home and ailing mother. Though the mother is said to have difficulty connecting to speech, she offers him good insights that are clarified by the nurse about the past of his mother.

Choosing a relationship with the past

In conclusion, it is evident that upon reading the novel Soucouyant by David Chariandy, one is able to wisely choose their relationship with the past for a better progress into the future. If the past contains events that are likely to draw one back from making progress, they ought to turn back on it. On the other hand, it is advisable to reconcile with our past, to know what the cause of our suffering is so that the journey ahead has certainty and success. However dark it may be, it is not always guaranteed that turning our back on the past is a guarantee to success, and therefore we need to make wise decisions between what needs to be forgotten completely and what cannot be kept at bay.

Work Cited

Chariandy, David. “Soucouyant. Vancouver.” (2007).