43 pages • 1 hour read
No Telephone to Heaven
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Colonization and Immigration
The history of British colonialism is present throughout No Telephone to Heaven. Harry/Harriet provides many illustrations of Jamaican colonialism for Clare, showing her how vestiges of British imperialism haunt the Jamaican landscape. Harry/Harriet speaks of a former slave hospital and shows Clare how poor the villagers are while British and Americans extract wealth from Jamaica’s resources. Harry/Harriet explains how Jamaicans continue to internalize the mentality of inferior, colonized subjects:
We punish people by flogging them with cat-o’-nine-tails. We expect people to live on cornmeal and dried fish, which was the diet of slaves. We name hotels Plantation Inn and Sans Souci. … A peculiar past. For we have taken the master’s past as our own (127).
Harry/Harriet’s most powerful illustration is the story of their own rape by a white British colonist when they were a small child. Harry/Harriet explains that their adopted mother, Hyacinth, took care of them when she learned of the incident, fearing that Harry/Harriet’s biological parents would see them as “ruined” (129). As Hyacinth explained, “Wunna is on sufferance here” (129). Because so many Jamaicans are afraid to stand up to British colonists—recognizing their own vulnerability—they are apt to blame victims for their own mistreatment.
The novel also explores the ways in which tourism functions as its own kind of colonialism, showing scenes of intrusive white Americans barging into Clare and Harry/Harriet’s conversations. Cliff also provides an illustrative excerpt from an article on Jamaican tourism in the New York Times. The tourism article extols Jamaica’s “abundance of Spanish and British colonial buildings dating back to the 1500s” and mixture of “elegant suburban homes, ramshackle slums and villages with thatched huts” (200). It also remarks that “the national language is English, and you can drink the water” (200), painting the island nation as a territory that exists for entertainment and consumption.
These toxic ideas are then echoed by a British man and an American man as they discuss a grossly inaccurate film they’re making about the Maroons: escaped slaves who ran away from their Spanish-owned plantations when the British took over the island in 1655. The British man claims:
‘Jamaicans will do anything for a buck. … Look around you … the hotels … the private resorts where you have to get an invite … the reggae festivals for white kids … Jesus! The cancer spas for rich people. Everyone from the hookers to the prime minister, babe. These people are used to selling themselves’ (202).
In the novel, emigration from Jamaica is an extension of colonialism. Clare’s travels can be read as a kind of tracing of colonial history, mirroring the movement of goods that have been historically exported from the Caribbean to the US and then on to England. Clare moves with her family to the United States, then studies in London before returning to Jamaica. Meanwhile, Harry/Harriet reports on the mass exodus of wealthy and respectable Jamaican families (including Clare’s aunt and uncle): “Jamaica needs her children […] people are leaving in droves—those who can” (140). By returning to Jamaica, Clare declares her dedication to helping restore and reclaim her homeland from the colonial forces that have stolen it.
Race, Assimilation, and In-Between Identities
No Telephone to Heaven features numerous characters with complex “in-between” identities. Clare Savage is torn between the conflicting identities of her father—a white-passing upper-classman of British heritage—and her mother—a rural working-class, Afro-creole woman. Clare’s father chooses to “pass” at the expense of family and friendships, ultimately losing the wife he loves. Clare’s mother chooses to reject Boy’s desire to “pass” and returns to Jamaica, aligning herself with her native people.
Harry/Harriet—who spends much of the novel living within the in-between spaces of their male and female identities—makes a similar choice to become fully female when they dedicate themselves to serving the revolution. Harriet’s decision thus inspires Clare to choose a side, to break away from her life as an “in-between” Jamaican woman.
The Power of Motherhood
Clare spends much of the novel grieving for her mother’s absence, processing ideas of motherhood, and searching for ways to fulfill the destiny her mother would have wanted for her. Clare aligns her mother with the idea of social justice for people of color—both American and Jamaican—when her father seizes her photo of the young girl killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. When her father tells her, “We are not to judge this country […] they gave us a home. Your mother could never understand that […] she blamed the whole place for a few ignorant people,” Clare reflects that the picture has been all the more effectively sealed in her mind, “[c]onnecting her with her absent mother” (102).
Clare continues to see signs of her mother—and motherhood—everywhere. She goes to England in search of “the mother-country” (109). When Bobby deserts her—after learning of her pregnancy, her own potential motherhood—this abandonment echoes her mother’s earlier desertion. When Harriet leads Clare to join the revolutionary movement, the movement’s leader continuously turns to the idea of motherhood and the question of whether or not Clare would kill for her people (her metaphorical “children”). Although Clare never fully commits to the idea of killing on behalf of the movement, she decides that her own mother would want her to help her people, and that this movement feels like the best way to do so. As she reflects: “Weren’t women supposed to accomplish superhuman feats when their own children were endangered?” (191).
Unlock all 43 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
