KK blog post 4

1. Almost all the main characters in the stories of Krik? Krak! are female. Why? 

I think Danticat writes the most of the main characters as a female because she wants to show the gender role that played in the story. First, there were still bias on the gender at that time. A lot of people think that men should be the one who go to earn the money, and women should stay at home to teach children, to cook. Danticat in the story shows lots of works that a female will get at that time. In the story "Night Women", the main character becomes a prostitute in order to survive. Of course everyone has dignity, but because her husband committed suicide long time ago, she has to find a job in order to keep her alive and raise her child. Because females at that time is hard to get a descent job, she becomes a prostitute. By describing this to readers, Danticat wants readers to know women's social status in Haiti. As a female writer, she also wants to show women's life at that time. For example, she describes how "Night Women"'s narrator becomes a prostitute in order to survive; she describes how Suzette's mom in "New York Day Women" has a part time job secretly so that her daughter can go to college in New York; she describes the life of a single mother in "Caroline's Wedding". In the story "Caroline's Wedding", it says: "Papa got a visa by taking vows in a false marriage with a widow who was leaving Haiti to come to the United States." Of course everyone will just think about the life of the man in this situation, but nobody thinks about the woman that was behind the man. Grace's mom had to bear that her husband got married with another woman. She also had to endure the days without her husband, since her husband already went to United States and she was still in Haiti. I think this situation just perfectly describe women's life in Haiti. Danticat shows that husband is women's only reliance. If a female lost her husband, she may have a poor life just like Night Women's narrator.


2. What role do you think does Guy play in terms of the structure of the whole book?
  In my opinion, Guy is the turning point of the story. Before of the story "A Wall of Fire Rising", the story talks about how the religions go and why people fled away from Haiti. But starting from "A Wall of Fire Rising", the story starts to become a tragic story. After Danticat writes about Guy committed suicide, the next story is "Night Woman". This two stories are relates to each other because the female narrator in the "Night Woman" most likely is Lili after Guy committed suicide long time ago. She then had to raise the child by her own, so she becomes a prostitute. This shows how bad a woman's life will be. Next, the story "Between the Pool and the Gardenias" talks about the narrator Marie adopted a dead baby. She goes crazy because she lost her own child. Then, Danticat writes the story "New York Day Woman" to show how toilsome a woman will be. Last, Danticat writes the story "Caroline's wedding" to show the life of Ma to raise two children by her own. In the story "A Wall of Fire Rising", Little Guy is always reciting some revolutionary's words. "I call on our gods. I call on our young. I call on our old. I call on our mighty and the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall all let out one piercing cry that we may either live freely or we should die." As the sentence says, the revolutionary urged to have revolution, and Guy did it. Guy knows that its hard for him to change something in real life. So he ended his own life as a way of revolution. Guy's death can be seen as sacrifice, and sacrifice has a cost. I think the cost is that the family will lose the man of the house. So after Guy died, the character "dad" is hard to find in the stories after "A Wall of Fire Rising". Guy turns the story and made the story focused on women. Women started to doing all the works after Guy's revolution.