Survival%20in%20the%20Reign%20of%20Terror

1
Survival in the Reign of Terror

• Edwidge Dandicat
• The Children of the Sea

2
Outline

• General Themes
• The author Edwidge Dandicat and Krik?Krak, the
  tradition and the collection of short stories.
• Haiti
• Children of the Sea survival of humanity
• Questions
• the womans experience
• The mans
• Humanity at times of trial
• Ironies (1) Nature
• Ironies (2) Letter Writing
• For your reference Reference

3
General Theme Edwidge Dandicat and Fugees

• One kind of diaspora refugees do they reject
  their past or can they?
• The lives of Haitians and Haitian immigrants.
• "new folk ethos
• the definitive cultural forms produced by
  Africans, or those of African descent, since the
  Atlantic Passage.
• five elements 1. Music and dance, 2. Drums and
  rhythms, 3. Rhetorical and polemical speech (e.g.
  rap and dub poetry), 4. Art as education and
  entertainment, and 5. Humor and absurdity.
• (Ref. Martha Cobb Harlem, Haiti, and Havana
  http//reach.ucf.edu/aml3930/danticat/ )

4
AuthorEdwidge Danticat

• Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti January 19, 1969,
  starting writing at 9
• grew up in Haiti under the dictatorship of "Baby
  Doc" Duvalier
• Emigrated to Brooklyn, New York 1981, (age 12)
  spoke little English then, yet published her
  first writings in English only two years later.
• Studied in Barnard College for French Literature
  1990, Brown College for Fine Art 1993

5
Writings

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

6
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
7
Dandicats use of Krik? Krak! tradition

• While that krik 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)

8
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." (note)
• . . .poor people who had extraordinary dreams
  but also very amazing obstacles." (source
  http//www.english.uwosh.edu/helmers/storyweaver.h
  tml )

9
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)
• e.g. Celianne a woman with a still-born in
  "Caroline's Wedding," there is a scene were a
  congregation prays for her and her child during
  mass.

10
Haiti in the Greater Antilles
1. the Bahamas to the North East of Cuba 

the Greater Antilles
the Lesser Antilles
11
Haiti

12
Haiti a Country with many languages

• The name of Haiti means mountainous country,
  which was given by the former Taino-Arawak
  people.
• 1492 Columbus discovered Haiti.
• 1600 Spanish conquered
• Hispaniola.
• 1697 Spanish ceded the
• domination of Haiti to
• French.
• 16971791 The richest colony in the
• world

13
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
• The first independent black nation.

14
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 ??).

15
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.

16
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.

17
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
18
Voodoo Festival
19
Survival in Chidren of the SeaStarting
Questions

• Love Gender
• How are the two lovers related to each other?
• Why do they not havenames? (Kompe should be a
  term of address.)
• 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

20
Survival in Chidren of the SeaStarting
Questions

• Style Theme
• In this human tragedy, what roles does nature
  play? e.g. butterflies (5, 25, 28-29) banyan
  tree, children of the sea, etc.
• Why do we have two narrators?
• What is the overall tone of the story? Sad,
  ironic, or keeping some sense of hope?

21
The Girl

• Though remembered as one protected by her
  genteel mother and watched by her father (p.
  9), she gets violent (4, 7) and rebellious (11).
• Witnesses cruelties of the macoutes
• Madame Rogers son
• forcing incest
• Dogs licking dead faces, soldiers molesting
  women.
• Communication with her mother p. 13 and with her
  father p. 28

22
The man

• ? dignityavoid crying(p9), bathroom(p15)
• ? his sense of identity
• Haitian the song p. 9
• finally an African 11
• loses his sense of location on the boundless sea
  (11)
• Dream of heaven 12
• a sense of community singing, sharing food and
  story-telling 14

23
His Dream of destruction and sublimation

1. 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)
2. 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) ?
   starfish and the mermaid having Catholic Mass
   under the sea ? Children of the Sea

24
Humanity at times of trial

• the boat people
• Vulture 18 gossiping, and fighting 20-21
• an old man like a painting, the boat like a
  museum 21
• The man --cannot throw out the baby Swiss,
• Communication between the old man and the man
  name and message. 27

• Under dictatorship
• whether to rescue Madame Roger.
• hope used as a weapon. 18

25
Humanity at times of trial (3) Family -- Papa
and Mamma differences

• Their different views of the two protagonistss
  love p. 13 --mama ambition papa not do her
  good
• Their different social status 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
  deathrescue or not self-denial and mourning
  17 19
• Manman speaks for Papa. Regrets being mean to
  you(p. 5) how he saves her 24

26
Humanity at times of trial (3) Love

• The man
• Sex as a way of intimacy.
• Tried to win the father over.
• Dont marry a soldier
• Remember their 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)
• Notebook as his will

• The woman
• --loves some one in her life. 22
• Listen to the exam result.
• Writing under the banyan tree

27
Ironies in Symbols associated with nature

• Love and red ants p. 3
• Mountains and endless sea as obstacles
• endless mountains p.3 p. 26 signs of power?
• boundless and unpredictable p. 6
• sea endless as love, too. The sea that is
  endless like my love for you pp. 15 29
• sun
• the sun ? associated with Africa pp. 11 14
  27-28 (going to Africalosing their
  direction)
• Butterfly superstition, her fathers hand
• Banyan tree p. 26 -
• --a spiritual support, most trusted friend,
  holiness can gods hear them?

28
Irony(2) the Letters will never reach each other

• Motivation keeping their connection with a faith
  in their reunion. 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)
• Awareness of not meeting again. It was nice
  imagining that I had you here to talk to. ? A
  poignant revision of the Krik, Krak tradition.
  (p. 27)
• His love will live when he becomes a child of the
  sea.
• Conclusion Despite all the weaknesses, evils,
  deaths and ironies they witness and/or
  experience, love and human connections are
  confirmed in their lives.

29
For your reference

• "Epilogue Women Like Us."
• Writers don't leave any mark in the world. Not
  the world were we are from. In Haiti, only
  politicians write.
• You remember thinking while braiding your hair
  that you look a lot like your mother and her
  mother before her. It was their whispers that
  pushed you, their murmurs over pots sizzling in
  your head. a thousand women urging you to speak
  through the blunt tip of your pencil. Kitchen
  poets, you call them. Ghosts like burnished
  branches of a flame tree. These women, they asked
  for your voice so that they could tell your
  mother in your place that yes, women like you do
  speak, even if they speak in tongues that are
  hard to understand.

30
Reference

• http//reach.ucf.edu/aml3930/danticat/
• http//voices.cla.umn.edu/authors/EdwidgeDanticat.
  html
• http//www.english.uwosh.edu/helmers/storyweaver.h
  tml
• Caribbean Women Writers http//www.english.ucf.edu
  /publications/lit3930/biography.html