The Kingdom Of This World

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain references to enslavement, rape, suicide, and violence.

Ti Noël is the novel’s protagonist. He is initially an enslaved worker of Monsieur Lenormand de Mézy. Lenormand de Mézy trusts him, but Ti Noël harbors fantasies of his death and often thinks about the Africa he’s heard of through Macandal’s stories. He fathers a dozen children with different women—a sign of his power and virility as contrasted with the feminized enslavers—and raises them to believe in Macandal’s stories. He is in this sense an everyman whose anger at his enslavers and rejection of Western culture represents the attitude of Haiti’s enslaved population. Throughout the novel, he participates in Macandal’s and Bouckman’s revolutions, looting houses and raping women in retribution for his suffering and emasculation.

After the failure of these revolutions, he travels to Cuba with Lenormand de Mézy and then makes his way back to Haiti as a free man. However, he is put into service by King Christophe’s men and abhors this new form of enslavement. Finally, after another revolution, he is free to run the now-ruined plantation of Lenormand de Mézy, playing at being king in an episode that satirizes the power of Haiti’s various ruling classes.