SHAPING A SYMBOL


supposed privileges available to her. The peg leg's accusation, so far
from the natural inclinations of her heart, shocks her so much that she
hears nothing more of his conversation with her mother, but focuses
entirely on the prejudicial accusation and pitiably attempts to deny its
veracity: "[Elle] entendait seulement la phrase sur les petites mulatresses,
- et elle venait 6 Man Bobette, elle mettait un genou en terre, elle secouait
la tote pour protester contre la phrase. ""[She] heard only what [the peg
leg] said about the mulatto girls. She went over to Man Bobette, knelt
on one knee, and shook her head in protest" (51, 57). Her devastation
following her mother's desertion, then, is both that of a devoted
daughter who sees that she is not desired, and, crucially, that of a child
made to understand that it is specifically because of her conception in
rape and her resulting mixed-race status that she is suspected of
disloyalty and shunned.
 This racial element is further illustrated in the detail that little
Rosalie's thoughts about being left behind turn from hopes that her
mother will return for her to utter bitterness the moment news reaches
that her mother is living happily in the mountains with a group of African
blacks and has given birth to a new child "aussi noiretjoli qu 'une graine
d'icaque" "as pretty and black as a coco plum" (72, 85). In response to
this news of her replacement, the alienated Rosalie, now appropriately
designated "Deux-Cmes," "Two-Souls," ruthlessly murders several
chickens in an act of vengeful rage-an act enjoyed by each of her
souls: by her black soul because she imagines this injury to the white
household would be smiled on by her mother, and by her mulatta soul
which now seeks to reject as it has been rejected, musing and then
cursing: "Et d'ailleurs Man Bobette pouvait crever, crever comme les
poules ses jambes raidies sous elle, ses yeux injects de sang, son bec de
negresse ouvert comme un entonnoir: bon vent, ... bon vent ma chore,
bon vent" "And anyway, Man Bobette [her mother] could die as far as
she was concerned, die like the chickens, with rigid legs and bloodshot
eyes and her black mouth open like a funnel: 'Bon voyage,' Two-Souls
would say. 'Bon voyage, ma chere'" (72, 86). This love-inspired hatred
is poignant in its suggestion of an almost overwhelming mental anguish.
And it is no coincidence that in Schwarz-Bart's text her murderous act
is the immediate prelude to the onset of her fear of changing into
something else-the most horrifying possibility (in her own mind) being
a dog (73, 87).
 Moving from the issue of the cause of Solitude's condition to a
consideration of the nature of that condition itself, it is important to
look closely at Schwarz-Bart's treatment of madness or zombie-ism in