AARON C. EASTLEY


 All were wild-eyed and grey with fatigue, soldiers and field niggers,
 mulatto citizens, and humble, silent Congos; all had the same look of
 terror and bewilderment, of vague, impersonal suffering, as though
 they no longer belonged to themselves and already saw themselves
 in the big invisible hands of the white men. (157)

Just as Solitude's "crab-eyes" are connected with those of others, here
the zombie response is shown to be more than just a singular response
by Solitude to the oppression of slavery. In both cases, in fact, Schwarz-
Bart takes great care to illustrate that Solitude's responses are not
unusual.
 Obviously, however, the generality of his vision does not save
Schwarz-Bart from the critique of those who feel that only a vocal,
courageous, absolutely self-aware Solitude is of worth to modern
audiences. Nor are such critics silenced by the argument that Solitude
withdraws into zombie-ism only under great duress, that her retreat is
an act of both self-preservation and self-determination. In order to be
wholly politically satisfactory, perhaps, Solitude must be depicted as
a woman fully the equal of the enemies she opposes, and to represent
her as anything less is a betrayal.
 Returning, then, to the question with which I began, why does Andre
Schwarz-Bart choose to render Solitude as ambiguously as he has
done-especially considering the several very different representations
constructed by others? Could it be that Schwarz-Bart, a fair skinned
man born far from the Caribbean, has sexist and racist/colonialist
leanings? His unique representation combined with an outsider's
authorial position may be enough to arouse reader suspicion, even
among scholars rightly trained to shun essentialist readings.
 Such an interpretation, however, hardly fits with either the details
of the novel or the details of Schwarz-Bart's own life. As Kathleen
Gyssels has written, "Andre Schwarz-Bart 6prouve une profonde
sympathie pour les Antillais (particulierement ceux qu'il frequentait a
Paris, oi) il rencontra la jeune Guadeloupeenne qui allait devenir son
spouse et son co-auteur) ..." "Andre Schwarz-Bart feels deep sympathy
for West Indians (particularly those with whom he associated in Paris,
where he met the young Guadeloupean woman who would become his
wife and his co-author)..." (788). Certainly a person with such feelings
and personal connections would not choose to be unfairly negative,
nor is Solitude the sort of text one would produce in order to vent
prejudices. Schwarz-Bart, however, seems to have been aware of the
potential political criticisms his text might provoke, and perhaps for