Everything Inside

The story is bookended by passages describing jewelry which highlight the effects—positive and negative—of tourism on Haiti’s economy and the lives of its residents. In the opening pages, the narrator describes how Mélisande and the hotel’s maids would sometimes find pieces of gold and silver jewelry left behind in guests’ rooms. After attempting to return them, the narrator and her husband “would allow the maids to sell them to the jeweler down the street, who’d melt them into other pieces to sell to other guests” (66). At all levels, local Haitians are making money in the circular economy described here: the hotel sells rooms, workers find and sell guests’ jewelry, which is then re-sold to new guests by jewelers. The brief, careless presence of foreigners is depicted as explicitly beneficial for the Haitian locals.

The end of the story, on the other hand, suggests that the tourists patronizing the narrator’s hotel can have a negative impact on the lives of the Haitian locals. The title of the story, “The Port-au-Prince Marriage Special,” appears in the final pages to describe the cheap gold rings given to Haitian girls by foreign guests after their sexual encounters. The narrator explains that these men gave girls like Mélisande “a ring like this as a symbol of their loyalty, then left them clinging to some hollow promise and never looked back” (80). The story suggests that the fake gold ring was given to Mélisande by the same person that caused her to contract AIDS, and the narrator warns that “this ring was like the pills she’d been taking at first. There was no truth, magic, or healing in it” (80). The comparison between the ring and the AIDS medication suggests that, although Mélisande treasures the ring, the true legacy of Mélisande’s love affair is her diagnosis. In this instance, the carelessness of foreign visitors has a demonstrably negative effect on Mélisande’s life.

By bookending the story with descriptions of jewelry found at the narrator’s hotel, Danticat offers two visions of foreign influence in Haiti: first, a positive perspective which highlights the financial benefits of foreign tourists, then, a more pessimistic outlook on the emotional and physical effects of careless tourism. The tension between these two perspectives is highlighted by Xavier’s attitude towards Mélisande’s diagnoses. The hotel caters mostly to “the foreign-born children of Haitians living abroad” (67) and Xavier’s explicit goal as a host is to “encourage these young people to come back and contribute their skills to the country” (67). Xavier is motivated by a love of his country and a desire to effect positive change through a campaign to gather support from outside the country. The narrator sees Mélisande’s diagnosis as the opportunity to provide concrete support to a fellow Haitian; however, Xavier is frustrated by Mélisande and Babette’s attitude towards medicine and the couple’s support and encourages his wife to stop engaging. These differing attitudes offer two different ways of offering support: Xavier’s big picture campaign to win over hearts and minds is contrasted by the small but meaningful work that the narrator does on an individual level with Mélisande. The story does not explicitly support one perspective over the other, but rather suggests neither is fully effective by the story’s ending.