Krik? Krak!

Study Guide

Characters

Marie, “Between the Pool and the Gardenias”

Save

Characters Marie, “Between the Pool and the Gardenias”

Marie has a childlike ignorance that, paired with her great disappointment with life, encourages her to exist in a fantasy world, out of touch with reality. When she couldn’t take her miscarriages and her husband’s cheating any longer, she escaped her village life for the city. When her life as a maid fails to satisfy her, she escapes into a world where the dead baby she finds is her living daughter and the household where she works is her own home. Nothing in the world matters to her, and the only people she feels close to are the imagined ghosts of her dead mother and ancestors. She wants to die so she can join them. Marie sees the real world as a cruel place and feels worthless because of her inability to have a child and continue her ancestral line. Marie is religious and superstitious. She bitterly resents her employers for their comfortable lifestyle and their dismissal of her as an ignorant peasant. She feels anonymous and knows that no one loves her, which gives her an overwhelming sense of despair.

Previous section Princesse, “Seeing Things Simply”