It is important to note that the French histoire means both a story and a history.Īs the slave old man’s story is told, his lack of agency becomes apparent. This makes things clearer for English readers (e.g., “ ouélélé-tumult”), although it may be redundant for those who understand the Creole.Īn omniscient narrator, who is inspired by old bone fragments, relates the tale he initially tells readers that he is telling “a story” but then later refers to it as “a history,” which indicates an entanglement of these two terms. Literary translator Linda Coverdale has attempted to maintain this sense by leaving original Creole words while also translating them in the text.

Their senses come alive with the old man and they are able to feel everything he feels. Also, the images used in the fiction produce in readers an almost visceral reaction. This allows readers to experience the critical nature of the slave’s run. In essence, the words run with the old man, uninhibited by inconvenient pauses of commas. Chamoiseau, in this narrative, seamlessly melds Martinican Creole with Standard French to create an organic, living, breathing language that moves as the protagonist does. Slave Old Man is a folktale about a slave who runs away from a Martinican plantation after being “bleached out” of his life, stripped of his memories and selves (7).

However, a John the Revelator figure narrates “Bones” and no longer tells the tale of the Messianic old man but that of “spirit,” that is, the influence of hi/stories that reflect in old bones. In the first six chapters, “Matter” to “The Stone,” the story of a Messianic figure is told.

This narrative structure also recalls the Bible, with “Matter,” the first chapter, being Genesis, and “Bones,” the final one, being Revelations. Their titles each seem to relate to the old man’s development, for example, “Matter” signifies insentience, while “Alive” indicates life in him. He begins each cadence, that is, each chapter of his novel, with lines from Glissant’s writings. Chamoiseau’s nod to Glissant is very clear. Créolité is a literary movement influenced by Édouard Glissant’s antillanité, which recognizes the Caribbean as a linguistically and culturally heterogenous space. Patrick Chamoiseau’s L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse (1997), translated in 2018 as Slave Old Man, importantly embodies notions of créolité that Chamoiseau has promoted throughout his career.

Slave Old Man by Patrick Chamoiseau