Skin color and skin coloring, as even the most superficial reader will undoubtedly notice, play a key role in Kleist's novella “Die Verlobung in St. Domingo,” published in 1811, six years after the independence of the former French colony Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. Color divides the society on the island, as blacks murder whites in their all-out battle to overturn colonial rule. Shades of color cause confusion and undermine automatic allegiances. Whose side is Toni, with her “ins Gelbliche gehenden Gesichtsfarbe” (161), really on: her white fiancé Gustav's, or her black extended family's, represented by Babekan and Congo Hoango? Why does “yellow” fever not just destroy the European colonial troops but also serve in this story to define the insidious disease (in the eyes of the white narrator) the black woman is transmitting to the white man in the act of lovemaking/revenge? What does the tone red indicate — Gustav's blushing after admitting to his infatuation with Toni's black eyes (168), Toni's reddening after his suggestion that she might prefer a white man to her black suitor (173), and Toni's flushing with anger as Babekan is explaining her perfidious plan to murder whites? And why does Gustav change color when he perceives the mestiza Toni, as she enters the room with a black boy on her arm and handin-hand with a white man? Clearly, black, white, yellow, and red are central markers that hold the story together, drive the characters’ actions, create unions, and tear them apart.