‘“Brother,’ he said. ‘Brother, what are we? What are we blackmen who are called French?”

Toundi asks this on his deathbed, signaling his confusion with his own identity and purpose in a world dominated by whites and subservient natives.

“But for me, it is more than mourning. I have died my first death….”

Toundi underscores just what Father Gilbert meant to him by suggesting that he has died as well, almost Christ-like, at the death of the man who meant the most to him in the world.

“I am not a storm. I am the thing that obeys.”

Toundi highlights the difference in demeanor and power between himself and the Commandant; the Commandant gets angry and rages, while Toundi must simply endure it and obey as a servant.