Survival in the Reign of Terror

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Survival in the Reign of Terror

• Edwidge Dandicat
• The Children of the Sea

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Outline

• The author and Haiti
• Krik?Krak, the tradition and the collection of
  short stories.

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AuthorEdwidge Danticat

• Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti January 19, 1969
• grew up in Haiti under the dictatorship of "Baby
  Doc" Duvalier
• Emigrated to Brooklyn, New York 1981
• Studied in Barnard College for French Literature
  1990, Brown College for Fine Art 1993

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Writings

• Beginning, 1978
• Breath, Eyes, Memory, 1994 (the rural practice of
  testing a girls virginity)
• Kric? Krac! 1995
• Farming of the Bones, 1998

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Kric? Krac!

• Kric and Krac
• A weaver of tales
• a Haitian storytelling tradition in which the
  "young ones will know what came before them. They
  ask Krik? We say Krak! Our stories are kept in
  our hearts".

http//www.bellaonline.com/articles/art5070.asp
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Dandicats use of Krik? Krak! tradition

• While thatkrik krak is the standard ending
  (sometimes opening) for a Caribbean story, the
  stories are usually anancy stories and folktales
  with moral lessons.
• Danticats nightmarish tales are a far cry from
  those, but her tales do carry a moral lesson
  about the powerful and the powerless, about the
  failure of food to triumph over evil. (Carribean
  Women Writers ERIKA J. WATERS)

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Kric? Krac! Stories of Common People

• She tells us of "kitchen poets," women who "slip
  phrases into their stew and wrap meaning around
  their pork before frying it."
• . . .poor people who had extraordinary dreams
  but also very amazing obstacles." (source
  http//www.english.uwosh.edu/helmers/storyweaver.h
  tml )

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Krik?Krak! (3) on Women

• Collective Biography of Haitian women.
• In many ways, each of these 10 stories (in Krik?
  Krak!) is part of the same tale. Women lose who
  and what they love to poverty, to violence, to
  politics, to ideals. The authors deceptively
  artless stories are not of heroes but of
  survivors, of the impulse toward life and death
  and the urge to write and to tell in order not to
  forgot. (ELLEN KANNERCARRIBBEAN WOMEN WRITERS)

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Haiti

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Haitian History

• The name of Haiti means mountainous country which
  was given by the former Taino-Arawak people.

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Haiti a Country with many lanaguages

• 1492 Columbus discovered Haiti.
• 1600 Spanish conquered
• Hispaniola.
• 1697 Spanish ceded the
• domination of Haiti to
• French.
• 16971791 The richest colony in the
• world

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Haiti 2 Independence

• 1791 the first major black rebellion
• took place.
• 1796 the former slaves prevailed
• under the leadership of
• Toussaint LOuverture
• 1804 the Republic of Haiti

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Recent Haiti Political Upheaval

• 1820 The failed dictatorship
• 19151934 The US invaded Haiti
• for 19 years
• 1957 Francois Duvalier
• Papa Doc became
• the president, ensuring
  his power through his private militia, the
  tontons macoutes (which means in kreyol, "uncle
  boogeyman").

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Recent Haiti Refugees

• 1971 Duvalier died and his son
• Jean- Claud Baby Doc
• succeed. By this time Haiti is the
  poorest country in the western hemisphere (and
  remains so to this day).
• 1972 Arrival of
• boat people
• in Florida.

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Haitian Race and Culture

• -Divisions of race and class between blacks(about
  95 of population) and mulattos(about 5)
• -Nearly all blacks speak Creole
• -French is spoken mainly by the mulatto elite,
  and is the official language.

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Haitian Race and culture(2)
-An animistic African religion that has been
melded with Catholicism -80 people believe in
Catholicism and 5 people are ProtestantVoodoo
is popular among the farming society
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Voodoo Festival
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Survival in Chidren of the SeaStarting
Questions

• Love Gender
• How are the two lovers related to each other?
• Why does she not have a name?
• Survival and Deaths
• What different stories of survival death do
  they each tell? (e.g. Madan Roger Celianne
  Lionel Swiss Justin Moise Andre Nozius Joseph
  Frank Osnac Maxilmilen)
• What are the minor characters(e.g. Madame
  Roger, Celianne, an old man) ways of surviving or
  resisting the dictatorship? Why did the baby of
  Celianne, Swiss,not cry at all on the boat?
• What do you think about the ending of the story

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Survival in Chidren of the SeaStarting
Questions

• Style Theme
• Identify some of symbols, or possible symbols, of
  the story. e.g. butterflies (5, 25, 28-29)
  banyan tree, children of the sea
• The functions of having two narrators.
• The use of ironies

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The man

• ?Self-dignitybathroom(p15),
• avoid crying(p9)
• ?Identification
• One may lose ones identification
• on the boundless sea (p.9, 11)

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His Dreams

1. Do you remember our silly dreams? Passing the
   university exams and then studying hard to go
   until the end, the farthest of all we can go in
   school. (p.21)

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Kompes Dream destroyed sublimated

• I dream that we are caught in one hurricane after
  another. I dream that winds come of the sky and
  claim us for the sea. We go under and no one
  hears from us again. (p.6)
• The other night I dream that I died and went to
  heaven. This heaven was nothing like I expected.
  It was at the bottom of the sea. (p. 11-12) ?
  Children of the Sea

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His views of the boat people

• Vulture 18
• Cannot throw out the baby
• Mixture of religion 20
• Still a human society 20-21

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Papa and Mamma differences

• Their different views of the two protagonistss
  love p. 13
• Her whole family did not want her to marry papa
  because he was a gardener from Ville rose and her
  family was from the city and some of them had
  even gone to university (p. 22)
• Their responses to Madame Rogers disaster and
  death 17 19 to the chaos 19
• Manman speaks for Papa. Regrets being mean to
  you(p. 5) how he saves her 24

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Symbols associated with nature

• Butterfly superstition, her fathers hand red
  ants p. 3
• Banyan tree p. 26 -
• --a spiritual support, most trusted friend,
  holiness
• the sea the sun
• boundless and unpredictable p. 6
• -- the sun ? associated with Africa pp. 11 14
  27-28
• Gone with the Wind

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Irony(I)

• I will keep writing like we promise to do. When
  we see each other again, it will seem like we
  lost no time. (p. 8)
• The sea that is endless like my love for you
  pp. 15 29

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Reference

• http//voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/EdwidgeDanticat.
  html
• http//www.english.uwosh.edu/helmers/storyweaver.h
  tml
• Caribbean Women Writers