34 AARON C. EASTLEY

 I would suggest, however, that there is considerably more to Andre's
 interpretive vision of Solitude than is revealed by a narrow analysis
 focusing only on her apparent apathy in the novel. A careful examination
 of the text demonstrates that Schwarz-Bart did indeed work from local
 legend in his depiction of Solitude's life, and that his portrayal of her
 dementia roots that condition in the traumatic alienation which she
 experiences as a result of her mixed-race identity. Furthermore, the
 condition of madness or zombie-ism in the text is consistently
 portrayed as a common form of resistance resorted to by slaves in
 extremity-not merely as the result of personal weakness or of any
 singular, "exemplary martyrdom." Schwarz-Bart, I would suggest,
 demonstrates integrity in his novel by creating a complex, credible
 and sympathetic portrayal of his historical heroine, while working
 within the confines of an oral tradition which he questions but does
 not contravene.
 In his novel, Schwarz-Bart's lays the foundation for his portrayal of
his heroine by framing very carefully the race-based rejection of
Solitude by her mother, who chooses to run away without her, and by
other blacks. Solitude, we are shown, is specifically left behind because
of her mixed race origin and identity, and once she comes to understand
this fully (as she gets older and is rejected again and again by other
blacks [89, 108]), her sense of racial alienation becomes acute-for
Solitude, as Schwarz-Bart sympathetically fashions her, is an individual
who identifies intensely with both her mother as a person and with
her mother's race.
 From her earliest years little 'Rosalie' (Solitude) is tormented by the
suspicions of blacks who fear she will turn against them, taking
advantage of the relative fairness of her complexion. For example, the
man with whom her mother will eventually run away (known in the
novel only as "the peg leg") treats her kindly enough, patting her on
the head and acting "toute comme si elle eut etd une chaude et claire
negrillonne," "just as if she had been a shining black child," but while
his acts are kind, "... sitat qu'il ouvrait la bouche, curieusement, c'dtait
pour dvoquer les petites mulatresses qui s'empressent de renier leur mere,
des que le cordon ombilical se ddtache du coeur" "when he opened his
mouth, it was always to talk about the little mulatto girls who start
denying their mothers the moment their umbilical cord is cut" (51,
57). His words betray the suspicions shown by "pure" blacks throughout
the novel.
 Solitude's problem (if it can possibly be called that) is that she does
not wish to deny her mother and her mother's race and accept the