Identify symbols:

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Children of the Sea
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AuthorEdwidge Danticat

• Birth-Port-au-Prince, Haiti January 19, 1969
• Emigration-Brooklyn, New York 1981
• Study-Barnard College for French Literature 1990,
  Brown College for Fine Art 1993

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Writing of the Author

• Beginning, 1978
• Breath, Eyes, Memory, 1994
• Kric? Krac! 1995
• Farming of the Bones, 1998

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Kric? Krac!

• Kric and Krac
• A weaver of tales
• I wanted to raise the voice of a lot of the
  people that I knew growing up, and this was, for
  the most part, . . . poor people who had
  extraordinary dreams but also very amazing
  obstacles."

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CRITICAL EXTRACTS
CARRIBBEAN WOMENWRITERS

1. Ingrid Sturgis
2. Ellen Kanner
3. Jordana Hart
4. Erika J. Waters

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INGRID STURGIS (I)

• ltgtKrik? Krak!, chronicles the ups and downs
  of Haitian life. A complication of masterful
  storytelling, it reveals the harsh life under
  dictatorship, the reign of terror by the
  strong-arm forces, the Tonton Macoutes. The
  sometimes metaphorical stories are filled with
  tales of Haitian rituals and legends that
  resonate with truth and poetry.

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INGRID STURGIS (II)

• Make no mistake, these lyrical stories are
  powerful and political works of art. Unlike
  Breath, Eyes, Memory, Danticat says The stories
  are more of a collective biography. I know
  someone it happened to or might have happened to.
  Its a lot of peoples stories.

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ELLEN KANNER

• 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.

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JORDANA HART

• More than anything else, the storytelling of
  the young Haitian-American writer Edwidge
  Danticat has given the world honest and loving
  portraits of Haitian people, both on the island
  and in the United States. She has smashed the
  numbing stereotype created by a barrage of media
  accounts of Haitian poverty, misery, and death.
  ltgt

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ERIKA J. WATERS(I)

• One of Danticats strengths is her irony,
  subtle and penetrating. ltgt While watching the
  young woman clutch her dead baby in the Children
  of the Sea, the narrator takes the time to
  record that her friend has passed university.
  Danticat shows here how desperately humankind
  clings to the myths and belief of civilized
  society.

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ERIKA J. WATERS(II)

• Irony is further enhanced by the use of krik
  krak as the title. While that 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
  he tales do carry a moral lesson about the
  powerful and the powerless, about the failure of
  food to triumph over evil.

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(No Transcript)
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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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Chronology 1

• 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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Chronology 2

• 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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Chronology 3

• 1820 The failed dictatorship
• 19151934 The US invaded Haiti
• for 19 years
• 1957 Francois Duvalier
• Papa Doc became
• the president.

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Chronology 4

• 1971 Duvalier died and his son
• Jean- Claud Baby Doc
• succeed.
• 1972 Arrival of
• boat people
• in Florida.

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

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Haitian culture(2)
?Home of Voodoo -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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Haitian Culture(3)
-Rituals involve dancing and drumming,spirit
possessions and the occasional zombie. -Iwa(the
spirit worshipper is chosen to be mounted by a
spirit)
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The commercial heart of Port-au-Prince
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Couple fishing
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Rice Farmer
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Waiting for food
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Voodoo Festival
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Relationship of the characters

•  
• Parents Parents
  Madam
• 
  Roger
  
• Kompe -- girl
• (the radio six) (nameless)
• boat people Celianne, an old man

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• QWhy is the female leading
• character nameless? Is there
• any special meaning?
• AWe can have much more
• space to exercise our
• imagination.
• Or her name only means to
• Kompe.(p3)

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About Kompe

• ?Self-pridebathroom(p15),
• crying(p9)
• ?Identification
• One may lose ones identification
• on the boundless sea (p9, 11)

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Major themes

• Hope (or hopelessness)
• Love
• ReligionChristian, Agwe
• Tyranny
• The topicChildren of the
• Sea(p27)

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• QHow do people react to
• tragedy,calamity, brutality in the
  story?
• A Fatherpowerless(p17)
• Kompeescape
• Madam Rogerresist(p16)

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• QWhat do you think about the
• ending of the story?What are the
• attitudes toward the future?Do
• they have hope?
• QWhy did the baby of Celianne,
• Swiss,not cry at all on the boat?

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Technique

• Narrative form
• Objectificationfiery red ant (p3), crushed
  snail(p3) ---- leading female role dog(p8)----
  the macoutesvulture(p8 p18)---- the macouts,
  Kompe and other boat people
• Simile (p22, 25, 26, 27)

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Kompes Dream(I)

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(II)

• 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)

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Repeat (I)

• 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)
• Papa worries a little about you. He doesn't hate
  u as much as you think. The other day I heard him
  asking manman, do u think the boy is dead? Manman
  said she didn'tt know. I think he regrets being
  so mean to you. (p. 5)

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Repeat (II)
Papa rejects Kompe as Manmans family rejects
papa.

• Papa
• Kompe

• Manmans (family) (from the city)
• (high social status)
• Papa
• (a gardener form ville rose)
• (lowe social status)

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Irony(I)

• Whatever you do, please dont marry a soldier.
  (p. 4)
• 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)

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Irony(II)

• I am getting used to ville rose, there are
  butterflies here, tons of butterflies. So far
  none has landed on my hand, which means they have
  no news for me. (p. 25-26)
• The black butterfly floating around us. (p. 28)

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Irony(III)

• She had chosen me to live life eternal, among the
  children of the deep blue sea, those who have
  escaped the chains of slavery to form a world
  beneath the heavens and the blood drenched earth
  where you live. (p. 27)

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Identify symbols

• a.blood(p3)
• b.black butterfly(p5,25,28-29)
• c.sun(p5,6)
• d.old button,tape
• e.Ville Rose
• f.Banyan tree

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Identify symbols(1)

• a.Blood(p3)
• --the hint of sex painful childhood
• b.Black butterfly(p5,25,28-29)
• QHow do you feel about the butterflies in Liang
  Chu and in Children of The Sea?

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Identify symbols(2)

• c.Sun(p5,6)
• Ex.I dont even like seeing the
  sunhopeless(p5) Miami is sunnyhopeful(p6)
• d.Old button,tape
• --previous government

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Identify symbols(3)

• e.Ville Rose
• --a hopeful place
• f.Banyan tree
• --a spiritual support, most trusted friend,
  holiness
• Gone with the Wind

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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