‘Children of the Sea’ is a harrowing story written by Edwidge Danticat, a Haitian-American woman who expresses her personal trauma and horrors through her literature. ‘Children of the Sea’ opens with an undisclosed man writing a letter to his beloved as he travels across the sea from his home, where is lover is also writing letters directed to him. The letters they write to one another dictates the plot and reveals the two unnamed narrators lives. Danticat expresses the mutual heartbreak between the two separated lovers and explores such trauma and pain with deep reflection and undertones towards her own trauma in regards to her life in Haiti, and her journey to America. Though to best understand the trauma within Danticat’s writing, we …show more content…
Rather than exploring lighter tones in her stories, she can only express herself through trauma. Let’s now explore what methods Danticat uses to explore such literary cliché’s within ‘Children of the Sea’. Danticat uses a considerable amount of symbols within her writing to dictate the suffering within. One example of such symbolism is Danticat’s implementation of butterflies. Danticat uses such symbolism to suggest the understanding of harsh realities. An example of this understanding is the female narrator and her theory behind butterflies. She believes they are able to send messages, both good and bad. An example of such is seen in the application of the black butterfly at the end of ‘Children of the Sea’. “…and then there it was, the black butterfly floating around us. I began to run and run so it wouldn’t land on me, but it had already carried its news.” (Danticat, 1996). Upon seeing the black butterfly and having it land on the female narrator, she comes to the realisation that the male narrator has died. Another application of symbolism in ‘Children of the Sea’ is the constant references to water within the story. Danticat uses the imagery of water to suggest the limitations of the characters’ worlds. Such allegory relates to
In A Place Where the Sea Remembers, Sandra Benitez invites us into a mesmerizing world filled with love, anger, tragedy and hope. This rich and bewitching story is a bittersweet portrait of the people in Santiago, a Mexican village by the sea. Each character faces a conflict that affects the course of his or her life. The characters in this conflict are Remedios, la curandera of the small town who listens to people’s stories and gives them advice, Marta, a 16 year old teenage girl, who was raped and became pregnant. Chayo is Marta’s big sister and Calendario is Chayo’s husband. Justo Flores, his conflict is person vs. self. One of the most important conflicts in this story is person vs. person, then person vs. supernatural followed by
Tim Winton’s short story, ‘The Water Was Dark and it Went Forever Down’, depicts a nameless, adolescent girl who is battling the voices inside her head along with the powerful punishments at the hands of her inebriated mother. The key concerns of life and death are portrayed through the girl’s viewpoint as she compares her life with her sad, depressed mother. Anonymous as she is, the girl constantly makes an attempt to escape the outbursts, that come as a result to her mother’s drinking, by submerging herself into the water. An extended metaphor is used when expressing the girl as a machine and her will to continue surviving in her sombre life.
Through the novel, Danticat expresses this. In the chapter “Night Woman”, an unnamed woman wants her child to live freely and happily so she goes into prostitution. In “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” two different women talk about their experiences with The Massacre River of their mothers. They both talk about how generations of women have brought light and hope into their lives. In the chapter “Children of the Sea”, a young girl goes into labor, while stranded on a boat sailing to America. The sight of a new child brings hope to the people on the boat. Finally, in the story “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” a woman has experienced much loss and is hopeless. When she holds a baby in her arms, she experiences happiness and hope. These stories illustrate the idea that Haitians can find hope and strength through familial generations, both past and future. Haitians have been able to find light in the wake of disaster through the love of family, and the generations of
The start of The Ocean at the End of the Lane began with an older man about the age of forty he returned home to his homeland in Sussex, England for a funeral. He then decided that he would revise the location of the house he once lived in. He then remembers that there was a young girl, about the same age as his sister, named Lettie Hempstock. He also remembers the fact that Lettie would always tell him about the pond behind the house being an ocean and not a pond. With Lettie on his mind and him being in town for the funeral he decided that he would go and visit where Lettie grew up. She was a young girl at the time so she lived with her mother and her grandmother. As this man approaches the house, Lettie is no longer there but a family
“The Surfer,” by Judith Wright is a poem about a young, tanned, strong man surfing in the ocean. In the middle of the poem the tone warns the surfer of the looming danger of the changing sea. With the author’s specific use of diction, structure, metaphors, personification, and symbolism, the poem begins with the thrillingly surreal weightlessness as a surfer stands on the surface, to the mysterious dangerous side of the ocean. The purpose of the poem is to convey that although some things can be enjoyable they can also be dangerous, in this case the ocean.
The short story “The Boat” by Alistair MacLeod is narrated by a man who comes from a fishing family. His mother’s side of the family has forever lived and worked by the sea and continues this tradition. The narrator’s father always wanted to be an academic, but worked on the boat to support his family. Through this passage it is evident that the parents’ characters clash in many aspects of their lives and are in constant conflict. MacLeod demonstrates this through the use of repetition, the contrast in other unrelated ideas, and through information that is withheld.
“Wade in the Water” is an excerpt from Alvin Ailey’s Revelations. His masterpiece Revelations was created in1960 and it reflects his experience and memories of growing up in Texas. “Wade in the Water” is a dance within Revelations that shows us a traditional baptism ceremony that takes place in a river. Alvin Ailey’s “Wade in the Water” shows us the hope that blacks had of someday being free. The baptism signifies the faith and hope of blacks being free from slavery and beginning a new life with freedom. For example, in (1:23-1:40) we see three male dancers with what look like tree branches “cleansing” the air from evil spirits before the baptism takes place. In (1:16-1:23) we see seven dancer taking two steps forward and two steps back with their hands together, like they were praying, and two other dancers with their hands up, as if they were asking god for help.
In the story, “Krik Krak” by Edwidge Danticat there is a chapter called “Children of the Sea”. In
As much as humans don’t want to admit it, the world wasn’t solely created for us. The novel, Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn has given us an insight on how the world has been treated by man and how it could end. In a time where the world is being destroyed we need to step up and protect the earth from total destruction.
Tragedy is defined as an event that causes suffering, destruction and death. When one is not fully aware of their knowledge, terrible events will correspond to what one has done. In the short story Mermaids by Richard Van Camp, the human suffering of Torchy resembles an Aristotle tragedy. Firstly, Torchy demonstrates hamartia when he is gambling. Additionally, the outcome of Torchy’s hamartia leads him to peripeteia which Torchy runs out of medicine. Lastly, Torchy wonders if he is a villain and this shows anagnorisis. Torchy’s actions ultimately lead his life to a downfall that is caused through accidental events, and this overall demonstrates the concept of an Aristotle tragedy.
The novel was written in first person and touched on questions that dealt with racial, linguistic, and gender identity. In the novel, “Breath, Eyes, Memory”, Danticat’s ways of expression of what it was like as a Haitian woman alongside with what was encountered, goes back to similarities in her epilogue, “Women Like Us”. The University of Minnesota, journalism called Vintage Books also support that most of Danticat’s stories were not dramatized but a clear way for Danticat to tell a story without stating the obvious. “Danticat does a marvelous job of implying our protagonist’s apprehensions with a scene at the airport involving her first encounter with her mother’s car. The account serves as an analogy to the broadness of the more general situation of Sophie (the character’s name in the novel) making the transition from Haiti to America, just like Danticat did. What leaves readers believing that Danticat’s stories were very much relatable to her is the dedication statement she makes in her book “Breath, Eyes, Memory” she says “To the brave women of Haiti, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, sisters, cousins, daughters, and friends, on this shore and other shores. We have stumbled but we will not fall.
With swayed feelings, and an ambivalent heart, I write on “Brother, I’m Dying”: a grim depiction of past and modern Haitian family life and another evident instance of blatant racism. Edwidge Danticat presents a number of opportunities for analysis and deductions to be drawn, however through the piece, the most evident and most inspiring facet is how communicating affection, whether through speech, writing, acts of service, etc, enables the family experience to be possible through hardship, distance, solidarity, and even death.
When people think about of America society they thought are prosperity, equality and freedom. However, today in American society many people who are less privileged in different areas of their lives face discrimination by others. The segregation that people experience involves violence, inequality in their jobs and even in the neighborhoods. George Saunders in his article, “Exhortation”, argues the sadness that many people face in their jobs because they feel like slaves because the salary and condition of job makes them to realize that in order to get their check; they need to give their lives on the job; in his article, “Sea Oak”, he argues how Bernie sees that her lives is nothing because in order to be a part of the American system the people need to be happy being exploited. Finally in “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz”, he argues how the happy zone helps makes people face their emotions in front of the stress they experience’s every day in their jobs and how people are manipulate by their emotions in order to kept their values away in order to protect their jobs. George Sanders effectively argues the idea of exploitation in people lives. He states that the America ideals that people believe are not true because in order to succeed in the society they give their lives to the system.
It’s easy to tell that the ocean is a mysterious and isolating place from all of the tragic tales we hear from sailors both real and fictional. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and an anonymous author’s “The Seafarer” are quite similar in that they both revolve around said tragic tales told by sailors. However, there seem to be more commonalities between their themes, tones, and messages rather than their seaward-bound settings. But before we can discuss these similar settings and deeper themes, we have to tackle their origins.
As human beings everyone suffers but we all suffer differently. Some suffer emotionally, some suffer physically, some suffer mentally. And through suffering and pain we gain different experiences, we either overcome pain and sorrows or we break down waste our lives. Edwidge Danticat present the theme of suffering in each of her stories. In all the stories the characters have to go through pain, but they all over come it in different ways. This is true in real life too. in the children of the sea that characters suffer but the outcome is that, in 1937 the outcome is inner peace, and My outcome is discovering myself.