36 pages • 1 hour read
Alejo CarpentierThe Kingdom Of This World
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Catholicism Versus Vodou
Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to enslavement, rape, suicide, and violence.
Ti Noël, Macandal, and other Black characters in the text see a clear opposition between their gods and the Christian god. They believe that the enslavers give away their power by confessing their sins, and they poke fun at a religion in which men do not commune directly with their gods. In addition, based on the actions of the enslavers, they believe that the Christian god demands their own enslavement and suffering.
Vodou thus becomes central to the Black Haitians’ rebellion against enslavement, both conceptually and practically. The enslaved Haitians have grown up with tales of loa who intervene directly in human affairs, and they call on them to intervene in everyday events. In addition, they believe this relationship grants them supernatural powers, including the power to spread poison and the power to become animals. They see evidence of their beliefs everywhere in nature, including in animals they believe are gods (or men) in disguise. Because the novella unfolds through the perspective of a believer (Ti Noël), there is some ambiguity surrounding whether these miraculous events actually occur. What is not ambiguous, however, is the power such beliefs have to inspire resistance among the enslaved Haitians; from Macandal’s campaign to poison the white enslavers to Ti Noël’s resolution to turn his shape-shifting abilities to the fight against injustice, every act of revolution in the novella begins with Vodou.
Moreover, the novella generally depicts Catholicism as toothless in the face of Vodou. Prayers to the Christian god never seem to bear fruit, even when they come from Haiti’s first Black ruler. When Henri Christophe becomes king, he adopts colonial Catholicism. His Haiti has Black priests and archbishops, and Christophe continues the Christian tradition of confession (even though he ultimately kills his confessor). However, this religion is imposed on the people, and Christophe himself believes this is one of the reasons why they ultimately revolt. Before his death, he comes to see the Christian god as a betrayer. This reversal suggests the importance of Vodou belief to Black solidarity in Haiti.
The novel’s depiction of Vodou is intertwined with Carpentier’s project of showcasing the “marvelous” as woven into the fabric of reality. In the Preface, Carpentier contends that Western literature has done a poor job conveying this; coupled with the novel’s depiction of Catholicism, this suggests that the Western worldview is incompatible with the marvelous because Christianity generally views the spiritual and earthly realms as distinct rather than as intersecting. However, as Carpentier was a white man, his use of Vodou as an alternative framework for conceptualizing reality raises questions of appropriation and fetishization.
Racial Violence Under Enslavement
This text tells the story of attempted, failed, and successful revolutions, and each attempt contains bloodshed and rape. At various times, Black Haitians hope to “exterminate” white colonizers, and vice versa. The novella suggests that such violence is inevitable wherever there is oppression and inequality.
Carpentier immediately establishes the work’s violent atmosphere by revealing Ti Noël’s fantasies of seeing Lenormand de Mézy’s head on a platter—an image that evokes not only murder but also cannibalism. From here, the violence only escalates. Both Macandal’s attempt to poison the populace and Bouckman’s more direct attacks result in the mass killing of white families, as well as their livestock and dogs. The violence mingles with celebrations as the rebels drink the wine and eat the food of their oppressors, resulting in a jarring tonal disconnect.
While such events arguably play into racist stereotypes of people of African descent as “savage,” the novella passes little judgment regarding the enslaved rebels’ actions: Rather, it frames their behavior as an intuitive response to the inherent violence of slavery. One of the first significant plot points is Macandal’s loss of his arm in a farming accident—an event that precipitates his immersion in the study of Vodou and poisons, ultimately resulting in the rebellion he spearheads. If there was any doubt about the brutality of the enslavers’ regime, their response to the periodic uprisings dispels it. When these rebellions are temporarily stopped, white colonizers contemplate exterminating all the Black Haitians, even shipping in dogs that they hope will devour them. The enslavers do so in part because they believe they will have difficulty re-enslaving the populace, especially after some of the rebels have raped the wives and daughters of the enslavers.
This points to the role sexual violence plays in racial violence. Once again, this violence is partly retaliatory; the novella alludes to Lenormand de Mézy having sexual relationships with enslaved women, which by their very nature cannot be consensual. However, it is important to note that women—Black or white—generally play a very minor role in the novel, serving largely as pawns in the male characters’ battle for dominance. Ti Noël’s eagerness to rape Lenormand de Mézy’s mistress, Mademoiselle Floridor, speaks to virility and power’s importance to disempowered men. Unable to own property or stay with his family, Ti Noël is still eager to pass on an inheritance, even if it is just his bloodline. Raping his enslaver’s mistress is for him a logical extension of this project: He takes ownership over what he has been denied and defiles (by 19th-century sexual standards) the person through whom the enslaver Lenormand de Mézy would pass down his bloodline. There is thus little judgment of rape in this text; it is presented as one way in which power is manifested, or rebellion furthered.
The Power of Nature
Animals and nature are important within the Vodou religion and are thus key to Carpentier’s depiction of Vodou spirituality as a wellspring of resistance to enslavement. The first chapter presents a severed cow head in a window that Ti Noël believes looks like Lenormand de Mézy. This ironic reversal—enslaved Haitians are the ones treated like livestock throughout the text—foreshadows the role that the natural world will play in aiding Black Haitians in their quest for freedom.
Macandal suggests how the closeness between the human and the natural can be a source of power for those who respect and understand it; he retreats into the Haitian wilderness after his accident, eventually learning so much about natural poisons that he spreads sickness and death among the white enslavers. As with Carpentier’s depiction of Vodou, there is a degree of essentialism here—an implication that the novel’s Black characters are inherently closer to nature—and even after Macandal drops out of the story, nature continues to play an important role in acts of rebellion. For example, the sound of conch shells heralds Bouckman’s rebellion.
Two figures in the text, Macandal and Ti Noël, discover another means of tapping into nature’s power. They achieve the power to transform themselves into animals—an ability that can be used to escape detection, to visit others, and to spread messages. Macandal uses his power to hide for four years. However, Ti Noël discovers that this power has limits: When he tries to live among the geese, he is rejected because he cannot prove his lineage. This suggests that animals too live in societies where bloodline and provenance matter. The animal world is thus not an escape from the human world; rather, the human world is an extension of the animal world.
This is particularly evident in the text’s depiction of natural violence. After multiple cycles of violent oppression and uprising, the novella ends with a wave destroying the plantation. The conclusion is ambiguous, potentially suggesting a parallel between the seeming intractability of human violence and the senseless brutality of nature itself. On the other hand, there are hints that nature’s brutality may not be entirely senseless. The wave’s destruction of the plantation is not the first time that nature “attacks” an unjust institution; Carpentier earlier depicts a lightning storm threatening Cristophe’s citadel. Moreover, Ti Noël believes that the geese reject him in part for his “cowardice” (i.e., his failure to use his powers to benefit humanity), which implies that nature has a moral sense. Ultimately, the novella suggests, nature may wipe away human injustice for good.
