Krik Krak by Edwidge Danticats - Admission/Application Essay Example

? Critical Literary Analysis – Krik Krak (1995) Order No. 823113 Word Count Survival Instincts – Escapism Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Krik Krak’ comprises of a compilation of 6 short stories that focuses on the pain and suffering of the innocent and helpless people of Haiti during the war and how their survival instincts help them to face this agony through ‘Escapism’. One of the very interesting stories in this compilation is ‘Children of the Sea.’ The crux of the story involves a series of letters between two lovers who were separated by the war. This narrative shows how the male escapes by a boat while the female protagonist is unfortunately caught in their hometown with the parents. ‘Children of the Sea’ by Edwidge Danticat, explains how the two lovers despair with their unfortunate situation and in order to dull the pain, they each escape into a world of their own by writing letters to each other. This form of escapism is consistent right through the story which makes the reader feel and empathize with their grief and suffering. The two lovers are callously torn apart and they lead such battered lives with no one to understand their silent suffering. The male protagonist, being a member of the youth federation who protested against the existing dictator, became the first target of the ruthless army. His escape on a boat is a mere shadow of hope for survival and the possibility of reuniting with his love someday. His escape into the letters he writes to her is his way of ‘escapism’ for freedom and survival. On the other hand, the girl, who is now restrained from going out or listening to her lover’s voice over the radio, looks at the world from a very different perspective. She too battles with the harsh realities of life that stifles her very existence and causes her family so much of distress. Just like her lover, she too makes use of her instincts of escapism and finds a way out of her misery. She escapes with her lover into a dream world of her own, with the hope that one day she would really be in the arms of her lover. The family and the girl escape from Haiti and start their lives anew in a place called Ville Rose, but even so, they are unable to escape the hollow feeling in their hearts. Even though they had escaped a horrific tragedy, yet, nothing ever seems to bring peace to their tortured hearts. On many occasions, a storm brews up within the mind and heart of the male protagonist and he is unable to control his pain and suffering of being separated from the one he loves. He tries hard to reassure himself that such unfortunate circumstances were meant to be. Such reassurance and the feeling of sad remorse are beautifully brought out in the following lines by the author. ‘Perhaps I was chosen from the beginning of time to live there with Agwe’….I know that my memory of you will live even there as I too become a child of the sea.’ (Edwidge Danticat, ) In the above lines, the male protagonist reassures himself by believing that it is the work of nature and God for showing him his destiny by making him dream of mermaids and starfish and a Christian Mass. On analyzing his true feelings, we understand that he has lost all hope of survival, but seems to be driving himself to escape his misery by plunging himself into the sea. Until now, it was his letters to his lover that had kept him alive with a ray of hope, but when he was told to discard his notebook overboard, his life seized to hold any meaning. His misery forced him to conjure up tragic illusions about a fifteen year old pregnant girl who had given birth to a dead baby, but was asked to toss her dead baby into the water for want of a lighter boat. Having done so, she too jumped into the sea because she was unable to face life after that. The protagonist watched the wretchedness around him, but it was his letters that that helped him to escape his misery. He saw the life draining from all those around him and realized that even if he escaped from the wrath of nature and the army and flee to Miami, yet he would not be able to unite with his love, because she would be married to another by her father very soon. This fateful reality that they might never be found at sea, along with the loss of his dearest companion – his notebook, he finds it too much to bear. Unable to contain his feelings of misery and suffering, he is driven to drown himself in the sea. Such an act of taking his own life, which is not under his control any longer due to his grief- stricken misery, can be considered as a pure form of escapism. I cringe from the heat .Yet if I am to live, I must depend on it’ (Edwidge Danticat, 1991) Danticat’s ‘Night Woman’ is the heart wrenching story of a prostitute whose life revolves around her son. The prostitute leads a life of debauchery to fend for child. The main theme of this story lies in the way the woman is torn between Day women who take care of the household and do chores and herself as the Night woman who is a prostitute, though; she feels that she somehow lies in between these two types of women. She feels that she is only doing this for the sake of her child recounting that every mother makes sacrifices for the good of the child. All that separates the mother while doing her ‘Work’ and the innocent sleeping child is just a plain lace curtain. She shudders that someday her child will wake in the night and will see her with another man. Thus, starts the woman’s escapism into a world of fantasy and story telling. The first time the narrative suggests escapism is in the following lines. ‘There is a place in Ville Rose. There are nights that I believe that those ghost women are with me’ (Edwidge Danticat, 1991) So far, the woman talks of her situation and how she shudders at the thought of her son finding her with some other man along with the thought of her being caught between the day and night woman. But, in these lines she shuts herself out from all reality and sails into a world of fantasy with the ghost women of Ville Rose. She wants to believe that there is a surreal world of women who brush out stars from their hair while riding on waves and woo passers by while leaving a trail of stars. She wants to escape to this world, and the closest she seems to come to them, is when she feels these ghost women near her. She then talks of her son and how she is so in-tune with his every nuance that when she kisses him, she knows by his reaction whether he is really asleep or not. The following lines show her anguish of wanting to help her son too, to escape the debauchery she they live in. ‘I whisper mountain stories in his ear. I want him to forget that we live in a place where nothing lasts.’ (Edwidge Danticat, 1991) Alas! The poor prostitute knows no other way to make her son face reality than to make him too escape just like her into a world of dreams and fantasy. She chides his thoughts while he is asleep into thinking of the ghost women and their hair with twinkling stars. She talks of rainbows, with one end being bad with deadly snakes and the other end having a hat full of gold. These lines also bring out the deep struggle between good and evil in the mind of the mother. In the next lines she transforms herself into a part of the fantasy when she says that once she crosses a stream filled with glass-clear hibiscus, she will turn into a goddess. This, by far is the most prominent part of the story that reveals how much the woman wants to break free and escape from her existing miserable life and completely purify herself so much that she inevitably becomes a goddess in her fantasy. Her brutal reality transforms into an altered reality where she appears to be pure, flawless and untainted. Conclusion ‘Escapism’ is the centrifugal point in Du Bois’s stories and both these tales bring out the theme so vividly. In the first story ‘Children of the Sea’, the theme of escapism is in the form of letter writing from one lover to the other, which serves to make them escape from the real world into a world of fantasy. This sort of escapism helps them to cope with their miserable conditions and find hope that one day they would be united. In the second tale, Edwidge Danticat’s ‘Night Woman’, we see the theme of escapism find expression by the prostitute mother trying to find solace for herself and her child, by fantasizing about ghost women with stars in their hair and hopes that one day she would become a goddess herself. Nothing can take away the harsh reality that faces this woman and her son but she finds solace in a Utopian fantasy world filled with vivid imagery and the satisfaction that in their world of imagination everything is celestial, pure and perfect. Reference Krik Krak by Edwidge Danticat. Web. N.d. www.books.google.com This essay requires critical literary analysis of Edwidge Danticat’s Krik? Krak! (1995). Write a cohesive, thesis-driven essay using specific, textual evidence (direct quotations) to support your assertions. The essay should be 6-7 pages (minimum 1500 words—not including Works Cited), typed, double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, 1 in. margins, with page numbers. Include a proper heading (including your name, course name, date, professor’s name, word count) and an appropriate, creative title. You must use MLA format with parenthetical documentation in-text and include a Works Cited page at the end of the document. The theme of the essay is SURVIVING SUFFERING. Craft an argument that explores and develops "escapism" as a form of survival. Provide a close reading of the following two stories -- "Children of the Sea" and "Night Woman" in Krik? Krak! and take three key scenes from these two stories to support your argument using the method of "escapism" to endure the misery engulfing the characters. Read More