“… ‘Ou libéré? Are you free, my daughter?” (234).

The simplest answer to that question might be “No, I am not”, yet to answer to the question at all would be overwhelmingly problematic. The true answer may in fact be “I do not know, but I pray to the heavens that I am”. At least, one can say that the uncertainty that any answer can be given is uniquely Sophie’s evident in her incapacity to respond. Throughout the novel Breath, Eyes, Memory Edwidge Danticat weaves the multifaceted and epidemic tale of family bound through inherited pain and desire. In fact, it could be said that the most prominent feature of this novel is to be free from pain.
Strikingly, this short phrase is written in creole and then translated to english demonstrating the warring dichotomy within the family as well within Sophie and her mother Martine. The phrase reveals the dual beings present within the two women. Both have exuded an intense desire to break away from the agonizing traditions of their Haitian heritage while not wholly assimilating to American or Western societal demands. The question presents itself ironically; in this case asking for a concept of freedom within a trapped language. That is to say, that while one asks for liberation you do so already acknowledging that you cannot ask for freedom without simultaneously ascertaining that your tongue cannot. It is as if you are asking if you have been freed while your tongue is tied. In a sense, the question speaks in tongue twisters.
Moreover, the phrase begs the question of from what is she trying to be free. On one hand, one can simply say maleficent traditions of her heritage that have left her psychologically wounded even after all physical scars have healed. On the other hand, one could say she’s trying to break away from an inherent part of herself. For Sophie, it becomes a question of being free from her own essence; a splitting of her existence. She was created, born, and raised in pain and gave birth to her own daughter through pain, yet she desires to be from it. Perhaps, unlike in the case of Martine, it is possible for Sophie to do so only because her mother passed. It causes one to wonder why death means liberation for the living and not those deceased. It could be said that Martine was the physicality of Sophie’s pain and through her death, Sophie’s agonizing essence died with her. That is to say, if one were two imagine it as a two-way road that suddenly becomes a one-way, the road does not become useless but becomes specifically altered. The road is now able to manage how much and in what way things pass over it. It is no longer succumbing to the comings and goings of others yet it decides whether they are coming or going. Sophie, at the moment of her mother’s death, decides whether her inherited pain is coming or going.
The truth remains that the question remains one that is unanswerable, moreover, unanswered in the novel. Its clarity exists in a paradoxical nature and causes one to think as such. It is a question and an answer but in the same breath is not either. Asking “are you free” insists that there is something to be free from but how do you know what that is, especially if you are unaware that you are trapped in the first place? Perhaps, Martine never knew that her mother’s death was her only salvation and perhaps Sophie never knew it was her mother that was trapping her until she was asked the question. In the end it really makes one consider if its really a question of being liberated or realizing that the question existed.