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The Struggle of the People of Haiti in Edwidge Danticat's Novel Krik? Krak!

Decent Essays

Edwidge Danticat's novel "Krik? Krak!" reflects the struggling people of Haiti from the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Danticat, born in Haiti, grew up hearing stories about her homelands past. She learned about the hardships and struggles her elders went through in Haiti. Danticat composed nine short stories that reveal the unmasking truth of what it was like in the previous generations to keep the history of her home country alive. Within the characters in these stories, she describes the inequality, cruelty, and pain that the people went through. Even though these nine stories are all different, Danticat relates them to each other by sharing the same problem of agony and suffering and the only resolution to escape the horrific ways were to flee …show more content…

In every story, people are suffering in Haiti, and Danticat relates them back to one another in a broad and diverse way. In “The Children of the Sea” The hopelessness of Celainne can be shown by how she throws herself into the ocean and it can be felt by the other narrator throughout the story. Relating the stories to each other, one scene from “Caroline’s Wedding” when she goes to mass for migrants who died at sea, just like Celianne. The reactions of each character from the different stories are all different. In “New York Day Women” the mother starts her supposedly better life in America, though the sufferings of the people from her homeland cannot escape her mind and heart (Vega-Gonzalez). The man in “A Wall of Fire Rising” wants to enjoy his moments of glory even though he knows he will end up with nothing but facing death. By showing various experiences her characters are faced with, she tries to indicate that they are all born in the unchanged land facing the same conflicts, and they all remain themselves and so do their experiences and sufferings. Although suffering appears throughout the entire story, Danticat uses symbols to interpret the theme of misery and oppression as well. One of the main symbols used in many of the stories turns out to be crying. Crying represents the life in Haiti and how negative and misguided it has been for many years. Crying expresses grief and misery and as long

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