A Multidisciplinary Research Journal - Devanga Arts College

having their body parts chopped off by men dressed up as Nazis. The most horrifying of all is the
picture of a woman’s pelvis; the head of a rat is depicted to be poking out from between the legs.
She gets disgusted, Rennie felt a large gap had appeared in what she had been used to thinking of
as reality” (BH 210). She is unable to stand the sight as she realizes that women are reduced to
raw materials to satisfy the perverted pleasures of men and she herself has not been an exception.
While travelling through Caribbean island, Rennie witnesses that principles like democracy,
freedom and equality are violated everywhere. She begins to identify her plight with that of the
powerless all over the world. As Jaidev says: “Woman becomes a metaphor for all those who are
damaged and abused only because they are powerless.” ( 111)
The twin islands of Caribbean St. Antoine and St. Agatha, are in a state of confusion and
anarchy. She arrives there on the eve of the first election since the island gets freed from Britain.
Minnow, a leftist reformist who has registered as a candidate for the post of President is shot, in
order to ensure the success of Ellis, the right wing candidate. Rennie unintentionally gets
involved in this post- colonial politics by unknowingly transporting a machine gun for the local
communist party. Rennie’s affair with Paul, who is a drug dealer and gun runner, also raises
suspicion against her. A rebellion ferments and Rennie is arrested along with Prince of Peace, a
communist candidate and Lora, his mistress.
Along with Minnow, Rennie visits a poor encampment where the victims of the previous
year’s hurricane huddle together. She finds that majority of these victims are women and
children. The Canadian government, had given some amount for rehabilitation, but practically,
nothing has reached them. She is shocked to see that seventy percent of the Caribbean Indians
are unemployed. She witnesses the pitiful condition in which prisoners live and the tortures
which they suffer. In the prison, she sees a “deaf and dumb man who has a voice but now words”
(BH 290) brutally suppressed by the authorities. She had once seen this homeless islander being
beaten up in the street by police. They, with bayonets, shave off the heads of prisoners who fight
for basic civil liberties. What is ‘more malignant’ is that, the policemen derive sadistic pleasure
in ill- treating the prisoners. Rennie recalls the film clips which she saw in Toronto policemen’s
pornography museum. She realises that the prison guards will not hesitate to practice any
horrible or inhuman deed on the poor victims: [….] nothing is inconceivable here, no rats in the
vagina but only because they haven’t thought of it yet, they are still amateurs. She is afraid of
men and it is simple, it is rational, she is afraid of men because men are frightening. (BH 290)