106 pages • 3 hours read
Tracey BaptisteThe Jumbies
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Restoring Balance Through Magic
Balance between the mundane and magical worlds, as well as between the human and natural worlds, is a major theme in the novel. Magic has the ability to disturb or restore this balance, and this premise creates the novel’s central tension.
The white witch articulates this theme most clearly, first introducing it in her refusal to help Severine extend her human disguise in Chapter 5. Severine reminds the witch that “You did it before” (27)—hinting at the help she gave Nicole to maintain her human disguise. The witch responds, saying, “[that] was for the benefit of both sides” (27), implying that the Le Mer’s love and Corinne’s birth strengthened rather than disrupted the balance between humans and jumbies. This suggests that separation between humans and jumbies is not the only way to maintain this balance. The witch’s own background is not explored, but she states that, like Corinne La Mer, she is part jumbie. This gives the white witch insight that the other characters lack. In The Jumbies, balance stands for peace between the island’s jumbies and humans.
It is therefore significant that the white witch contradicts her statement by saving Corinne and her friends from drowning by Severine in Chapter 11: Severine sets up the white witch to betray her vow, tormenting the children because she knows the witch will feel compelled to help them. This is supported when, after the witch helps the children, Severine shouts to her: “You know what happens now […] You helped them. Now you have to help me.” (56). Severine’s desire to manipulate the witch shows that she only cares about securing the witch’s help and is not interested in the cost of upsetting the balance between worlds. This self-centered perspective is one of the things that proves Severine’s ruin. Once she is gone, the jumbies gladly help Pierre and Corinne; they only sided with Severine out of fear.
The narrative distinguishes between two kinds of balance, which represent different attitudes toward power. The white witch understands that power must be shared equally between jumbies and humans, whether they integrate with one another or remain separate; their existences depend on their ability to live together on the island peacefully. Severine’s idea of balance is totalitarian: She believes jumbies must eradicate humans in order to survive. It is her all-or-nothing attitude that distinguishes her from Nicole. Nicole believed humans and jumbies could exist together and sacrificed herself in hopes of making that coexistence a reality. Rather than seeing Nicole’s death as a choice she made to remain in the human world, Severine sees Nicole’s death as the humans’ fault; particularly, Pierre and Corinne’s fault. The novel teaches that all-or-nothing thinking, especially when it concerns the balance of power between groups, can only end in destruction. To restore the balance that Severine disrupted, Corinne uses magic with healing and communal origins.
The Complexity of the Natural World
In The Jumbies, the natural world consists of plants and animals, in addition to supernatural creatures like jumbies. Jumbies live in the forests, making environments like trees, groves, and caves their homes. They can also feed on the forest’s animals, as Severine shows in Chapter 9, when she eats a lizard, and when the band of douens looks hungrily at Mr. Frog in Chapter 16. The natural world’s complexity in The Jumbies refers to the sentience shown by its plants and other creatures.
Mr. Frog exemplifies this theme in his capacity for both intelligence and vulnerability. Just as jumbies are about to attack, he simultaneously saves Corinne and directs her home, yet Mr. Frog is helpless against Bouki and Malik when they put him in the well. Narrating a chapter from his perspective signals that, even though Mr. Frog is not a supernatural creature, he has thoughts and feelings that should be respected. This is a lesson to young readers that seemingly insignificant actions like putting a frog in a dry well can have serious consequences and that no form of life should be taken for granted.
The complexity of the natural world includes how it intersects with human enterprise on the island. The main characters’ occupations are closely connected with nature. Pierre is a fisherman, and Corinne grows and sells oranges. Mr. Rootsingh is a sugarcane farmer, and the white witch makes herbal potions. As a primarily agricultural community, the people who live on the island have a deep knowledge of and respect for the natural world. However, until now, this has not included the jumbies. In addition to being an important part of Caribbean folklore and heritage, the jumbies represent the forest and its diversity of life. The different kinds of jumbies represent the many kinds of animals that live in the forest; humans’ encroachment on the jumbies, driving them deeper into the forest and upsetting the natural balance, is the origin of the novel’s tensions and the catalyst for Severine’s anger.
Corinne voices this lesson in Chapter 44, when she and the witch grow a magical row of orange trees between the town and the forest. The trees, Corinne explains, aren’t meant to keep the jumbies in; they are meant “to keep us out. We’ve been taking their land. They deserve to survive too” (225). Just as Severine’s downfall was greed, the humans’ greed for more space and resources threatens to destroy the island’s rich natural habitat. Corinne shows her growth as a character in her effort to discourage the villagers from venturing into the forest and disturbing the jumbies, wildlife, and plants there.
The Importance of Self-Acceptance
Corinne’s coming-of-age arc reflects this theme as she adjusts to her new identity as part human, part jumbie. Corinne’s acceptance of her part jumbie identity is difficult because, firstly, she only recently accepted that jumbies exist. The idea that she too could be a magical creature is initially too large a leap for someone who has always maintained a rational view of the world. Secondly, Corinne does not want to be associated with a monster like Severine. When Corinne was growing up, she learned that jumbies were evil and wanted to harm humans. Whether she believed in jumbies or not, she knew they were bad. Finding out that her kind, loving mother was a jumbie is hard for Corinne to accept. In response, she denies Severine’s stories about Nicole: “You are a liar! I am no family of yours” (118).
In this scene, Corinne misguidedly decides to fight Severine in defense of her father, and, by extension, her human identity. However, as the white witch warns her in Chapter 27, she cannot defeat Severine with brute strength. To defeat Severine, Corinne must harness the magic within her, and to do that, she needs to accept that her mother was a jumbie. Corinne must also accept that it was Nicole’s love for her that made her strong enough to keep her human disguise for years. The white witch confirms this when she tells Corinne: “Mothers are like that. Their children strengthen them. There was no trick” (166). Accepting her mother’s love requires Corinne to accept her own identity as part jumbie.
The white witch also teaches Corinne and her friends that making magic is little more than work that uses “your head and your heart” (164). She also echoes Nicole’s words that “A seed is a promise” (164). Therefore, to make magic, Corinne must use her head and her heart to activate the seed’s promise; according to Nicole, the seed will “take care” (22) of Corinne if she commits to take care of it. To accomplish this, however, Corinne must fully embrace her part jumbie identity.
The necklace is the physical link between Nicole and Corinne; it contains the seed that Corinne must literally activate for the magic to work. Only by listening to her inner voice does Corinne understand that the necklace is the key to her strength. Neither Nicole nor the witch tells Corinne exactly what to do; so as long as Corinne refuses to believe she is a jumbie, she will not find the key to unlocking her magic. She proves her self-acceptance when she tells her friends that she will go alone to retrieve the pendant from the cliff. At this point, Corinne accepts that she possesses a power her friends do not, and that helping her further could endanger them. Corinne uses her strength of character and her newfound belief in her magical abilities to save those she loves and restore peace on her island.
