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What Happens To The Dominicans Chapter Summary

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Setting- the story takes place in 1937 in Alegria consisting of many sugarcane mills, as the story progresses, the characters travel through the Dominican Republic as far as the Massacre River which borders the Dominican and Haiti, in Haiti the setting is mostly the Cap, which is the town where Yves is from, Amabelle returns to the Dominican Republic and the story ends in the Massacre River

Conflict- The major conflict in the book involves the fact that the Generalissimo wants to cleanse the Dominican Republic of Haitians even though they are needed as workers. The 1937 massacre occurs during the story as Trujillo forces the Haitians who migrated to the Dominican to be killed. The Dominicans are mainly a Spanish-speaking Catholic population while the Haitians are African and speak Creole. Trujillo sees them as a threat to the government and economy even though it is mere prejudice. He considers them inferior and kills them with extreme brutality. Language is another conflict as Haitians live and die …show more content…

The author incorporates a calm, peaceful mood throughout novel which expresses the environment of the island. She describes the quiet life at Señora Valencia’s home where Amabelle dreams peacefully about Sebastian. However, mostly the mood is evocative and powerful. Danticat brings about strong imagery and emotions to the mind as she describes the torment that Amabelle endures with the soldiers. The evocative mood is present when Joel and Rafael die and when Amabelle and Yves get well at the clinic. The author brings about powerful, haunting emotions to the reader when she writes about the drowning of Amabelle’s parents and Trujillo’s insanity. The mood is also mysterious due to the fact that whenever Amabelle reaches a body of water, her future is unclear. As the story ends, she floats in the river where her parents died, and this leaves an ambiguous, mysterious mood to the ending of the

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