Cereus Blooms at Night
Cereus Blooms at Night
Cereus Blooms at Night
Plot/Summary: It’s themes include gender and sexual relationships, sexual violence,
identity formation, and resilience despite cruel social structures. The novel is set in
Paradise, a fictional town in the Caribbean. Mala (aka Pohpoh) Ramchandin, a seemingly
mad woman, is accused of killing her father, Chandin Ramchandin. She has spent her
entire life on the island of Lantanacamara (a fictional island in the Caribbean). After a
judge declares that she is a mental imbecile and likely murdered her father, Mala is sent
to the Paradise Alms House. Tyler, a male nurse, takes care of her. “I hardly had opened
my mouth to explain that Miss Ramchandin was too frail to inflict even a bad thought
when Sister screamed at me for being insolent and blatantly disregarding her
authority.” All the other social workers are afraid of her because of her reputation as a
father-killer. Where Mala is mute, Tyler is garrulous. Because of his voluble disposition,
Tyler is the main narrator of Cereus Blooms at Night. As a gay man, Tyler is frequently
ostracized on the island. Though he is a skilled nurse, the administrator doesn’t let him
work with most patients unless they’re “freaks” like Mala. The social exclusion he has
felt for most of his life makes him sympathetic toward Mala’s suffering.
As Mala begins to see that Tyler holds no ill-intent, she opens up. Her first noises imitate
the sounds of birds and insects and then speak softly and in short sentences. Tyler
learns that there are tragic reasons behind Mala’s “uncultured” behavior. For starters,
she had terrible parents. Her mother abandoned her at a young age and her father
repeatedly raped her. Her younger sister, understandably wishing to remove herself
from this environment, left the country. Mala is crushed after this departure; she felt
that her younger sister, Asha, was one of the people who reciprocated her love. Despite
the harrowing nature of Mala’s experiences, the luminous storytelling and unique
characters bring light to otherwise dark places, and show that perseverance and
allowing space for love, can overcome all manner of tragedy.
Analysis
LOVE: Cereus Blooms at Night asks readers to disentangle coercive benevolence from
love, for benevolence is a problematic rhetoric both of “compassionate” forms of
empire and of family “care.” Mootoo connects the violence hidden within ideologies of
the loving, happy family with the violence of heteronormative, racist, “humanizing”
colonial institutions (including the Christian mission, colonial education, and slave and
indentured labor) created to serve the needs and ideals of the “productive” family of
capitalist empire. Of course, “telling” on “the family” is generally taboo because it
threatens to disrupt the cycles of violence hidden under rhetorics of love, care, and
benevolent protection. In drawing these lines of connection between the public family
of empire and the private family unit, Mootoo pushes her readers to ask, “What
atrocities have been done in the name of ‘love’?” Cereus Blooms at Night emphasizes
how “love’s discourse must be examined for the history it shares with colonialism in
the context of the civilizing-Christianizing mission and enlightenment ethics
conditioned by [Enlightenment] reason”.
Diasporic Otherness of Tyler & Mala : Among the characters of Shani Mootoo's Cereus
Blooms at Night, Tyler exhibits a clear sense of diasporic Otherness. As a native
Lantanacamaran and a newcomer to the town of Paradise, Tyler states that he was, is, and
may always be an "outsider". This sense of alienation is especially apparent during his
first few weeks at the Paradise Alms House. Not only is he the only man in the
profession of nursing, but the staff makes an effort to keep him in the periphery of
Paradise Alms House affairs. For example, despite all his formal training abroad, the
matron is reluctant to assign him any task besides errands and menial chores. In
addition, the other nurses often mock him in a "condescending tone," conveying the
"malice in their words". Although the Alms House is his residence, he is treated as an
unwelcome stranger. This sense of Otherness can also be perceived through the
alienation he feels from his own body and identity. Not quite fitting the hegemonic
gender role of heterosexual male, Tyler "pondered the gender and sex roles that
seemed available to people, and the rules that went with them" . For years, he was
preoccupied with understanding "what was natural and what perverse, and who said
so and who" . After much reflection, he leaves the shores of Lantanacamara in hopes of
being somewhere where his "perversion" which he "tried diligently to shake might be
either invisible or of no consequence to people". This is not surprising, given his
admittance of loathing his "unusual femininity". Clearly, Tyler feels lost even when it
comes to understanding himself.
The character of Mala, however, reduces Tyler's sense of estrangement and Otherness.
Fancying that they share "a common reception from the rest of the world," the nurse
straightforwardly states that "[s]he knows [his] nature" . The aged but powerful woman
prods Tyler in ways that give him the courage to feel more at ease with himself. This is
best demonstrated by the diasporic moment in which Tyler changes into the dress that
Mala steals for him. Instantly, he imagines himself as being in a female body, excited by
the metamorphosis. Yet, Mala's lack of response and attention eventually makes him
feel "flat-footed and clumsy," like someone who is "[n]ot a man and not ever able to
be a woman, suspended nameless in the limbo state between existence and
nonexistence". However, he soon realizes that rather than trying to make a spectacle of
him, Mala was simply "permitting [his nature] its freedom". After this experience, Tyler
declares that he "had never felt so extremely ordinary, and [he] quite loved it" . In this
manner, Mala helps Tyler discover who he really is.
A close reading of Tyler's "transformation" reveals that the passage employs a particular
narrative gaze.
Conclusion:
The novel packs a blizzard of sensitive themes such as gender, identity, sexual as well as
physical violence, incest, etc. which makes the reader contort with abhorrence and
repulsion. Combining stories of family incest and rape, interracial love, same-sex love,
imperial economies, missionary theology, colonial science, and histories of indentured
and slave labor, for example, allows Mootoo to demonstrate connections across
multiple legacies of imperialism and simultaneously to critique them. The novel is full of
contrasts, moments of delight and anticipation alongside the growing recognition of
impending horrors, abuse and neglect. It taunts the reader into a state of hope, as the
potential for things to have been otherwise is so close at times, only for the illusion of
escape to become shattered by the reality of a situation that holds tight to those who
are caught in its web. Tyler’s narration asks us to think collectively, to recognize the
possibility for change if we keep each other in mind, if we gain resistant consciousness
through our knowledge of each other’s (unknowable) stories. . It engages readers in the
act of “symbolic insurgency,” inviting us to resist while also demanding that we imagine
liberation from oppression.