First three stories response

Under the threat of Papa Doc and the brutality of other countries, Haitians suffered more than we can ever imagine. The first three stories of Krik? Krak! perfectly present the theme of hopelessness by using the description of characters’ actions and describing people’s emotion turmoil. While facing the dangers that they can not avoid, there is so little people can do. All three stories ended with a tragedy, which “children of the sea” introduces how two lovers are secretly in touch, but due to the threat of Papa Doc, the male narrator fled from Haiti. However, the boat sank due to the attack by the soldiers. “Nineteen Thirty-seven” talked about how narrator’s mother was claimed as a witch due to the death of a baby she was taking care of. Her mother was imprisoned in a bad condition, and eventually died, which was foreshadowed by the cry of Madonna. The third story “A wall of fire rising” narrates a family of three, how the child has been learning lines of a revolutionary play and his father Guy stole a hot air ballon, which caught the neighbour’s attention. Because of the fear of being caught and punished, the father jumped out and died. All three tragedies end here.

From the story ‘Children of the sea’, when Celianne is forced to throw her new born baby overboard due to the overcrowding condition, as a reader I could sense the theme of hopelessness. For instance, in page 23, the first few line of the male’s narration, he writes ‘I watched her face knot up like a thread, and then she let go. It fell in a splash…They went together like two bottles beneath a waterfall.’ The two detailed similes used by Edwidge Danticat emphasises how hopeless the whole situation was and the sense of desperation the male felt on Celianne. From the reader’s point of view, it is extremely shocking due to the fact that humanity seems so tiny and insignificant in front of the desire of survival. The captain forced Celianne to threw the baby away in order to protect himself from sinking. What is even more hopeless is the line after it. ‘The shock lasts only so long, there was no time to even try and save her.’ Nobody on the boat are even willing to save the two, which perfectly shows the theme of hopelessness. 

Similar to the style of “Children of the sea”, “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” also shows the theme of hopelessness, but different by the way of using language. When Josephine watches her mother being threw into the fire and burned, her narration was emotional, but at the same time hopeless. The second last paragraph says ‘I held the Madonna tightly against my chest, so close that I could smell my mother’s scent on the statue… I raised my head toward the sun thinking, one day I may just see my mother there.’ the description of her own action was so real that makes readers feel shocked and desperate. Despite the sense of sadness, the central goal of the author is to show how the people could not do anything when they are being threat by the government. They were so scared that they were afraid of speaking from their hearts. 


Also, from the story “A wall of rising fire’, readers can see how a poor family lost their only support  (Guy), which was author’s intention to grab readers’ attention by letting them to imagine what will happen to this family’s future. To sum up, all three stories introduce the theme of hopeless by using narrators’ emotional language and making readers feel the sense of powerlessness. 

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