No Telephone to Heaven

Each chapter of No Telephone to Heaven opens with an epigraph that suggests something about the chapter’s theme. The sources for these epigraphs are wide-ranging and formally diverse, including Barry Floyd’s textbook entitled Jamaica: An Island Microcosm; a Yoruban hymn to Ṣàngó (a God known for his qualities of strength and resistance); a Jamaican Proverb; and a poem by Derek Walcott dedicated to Jean Rhys (the author best known for her novelistic revision of Jane Eyre called Wide Sargasso Sea). What do you think Cliff is trying to suggest with the diversity of these source texts? Choose 2-3 epigraphs and analyze their connection both to the novel and to each other. 

From the beginning to the end of No Telephone to Heaven, Clare develops a complex relationship with motherhood. Her mother flees to Jamaica with her darker-skinned sister, leaving Clare with her light-skinned father in America. When her mother dies, Clare does not respond with the emotional reaction her father deems appropriate. When she becomes pregnant with Bobby’s child, Bobby responds with terror, and ultimately leaves her. She then experiences a painful miscarriage and is later denied when she attempts to adopt a child.