Magical Realism in School Days

Patrick Chamoiseau’s School Days deftly crafts a story-telling narrative of a little boy entering the education system in a colonized country of Martinique. Most of the memoir is narrated in the third person by what feels like an old story teller, hovering over the little boy as he goes between home and school. The tone very much encompasses the wonder of someone telling a bed time story or a fairy tale. This story-telling tone sets up the memoir for powerful moments of magical realism that occur in the text. The mild magical realism functions as a way for the reader to see what the little boy experiences through his child eyes. Rather than the ignorant child perspective we’ve seen in other works, we get fantastical elements as a way of inhabiting the little boy’s mind through the lens of the story. The magic moments are not super overt, but they certainly add tremendous imaginary setting “Heading off to school in the early afternoon, you encounter skittering dust devils,” (55) as well as character development, “When you looked into his eyes, you could see the claws and fangs that hadn’t found an outlet, and above all, you sensed a relentless vampire-hunger that made him a thousand years old” (80). These descriptions, in conjunction with kid’s story style names such as “Big Bellybutton” effectively establish a vision into the little boy’s consciousness. 

The added drama from the fantastical elements encapsulates how children understand time differently and can have difficulty imagining the future. “The little boy clutches Mam Ninotte’s hand even more tightly. He hears his name. The world falls to pieces” (34). The severity of Mam Ninotte leaving the little boy at school without her, to him felt as though it meant she would never return. The little boy’s inability to imagine a future where he sees her again for him felt as though the world was falling apart. The author employs dramatic language to impress upon the reader the little boy’s emotions.

There are also moments in present-time, when the adult version of the little boy directly addresses the reader to share his waning memories of figures from his childhood: “Mam Saliniere, I have only the wispiest memories of you. Your name. Your genteel manners. Your benevolent patience. My hands clapping while you sing” (29). Although rich memories do not persist in the adult perspective, these moments distill certain longevities, such as Mam Saliniere’s tenderness, “but these things nourish the quiet splendor of a tenderness I can’t put to words” (29). As a reader these adult perspective directives help us to locate what were the more important parts for the little boy after we’ve watched the entire scene play out.