Suggestions
Use up and down arrows to review and enter to select.Please wait while we process your payment
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Sometimes it can end up there.
Please wait while we process your payment
By signing up you agree to our terms and privacy policy.
Don’t have an account? Subscribe now
Create Your Account
Sign up for your FREE 7-day trial
Already have an account? Log in
Your Email
Choose Your Plan
Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan!
Purchasing SparkNotes PLUS for a group?
Get Annual Plans at a discount when you buy 2 or more!
Price
$24.99 $18.74 /subscription + tax
Subtotal $37.48 + tax
Save 25% on 2-49 accounts
Save 30% on 50-99 accounts
Want 100 or more? Contact us for a customized plan.
Your Plan
Payment Details
Payment Summary
SparkNotes Plus
You'll be billed after your free trial ends.
7-Day Free Trial
Not Applicable
Renews April 9, 2023 April 2, 2023
Discounts (applied to next billing)
DUE NOW
US $0.00
SNPLUSROCKS20 | 20% Discount
This is not a valid promo code.
Discount Code (one code per order)
SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. You may cancel your subscription on your Subscription and Billing page or contact Customer Support at custserv@bn.com. Your subscription will continue automatically once the free trial period is over. Free trial is available to new customers only.
Choose Your Plan
For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more!
You’ve successfully purchased a group discount. Your group members can use the joining link below to redeem their group membership. You'll also receive an email with the link.
Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership.
Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! Continue to start your free trial.
Please wait while we process your payment
Your PLUS subscription has expired
Please wait while we process your payment
Please wait while we process your payment
Crying represents life, which in Haiti is always marked by pain. Crying expresses suffering, and as long as Haitians live, they suffer and therefore cry. Danticat indicates that both Célianne’s baby in “Children of the Sea” and the dead baby in “Between the Pool and the Gardenias” are dead by noting that they do not cry. For Marie, the absence of crying is positive in a way. She wishes no babies cried, because a dead baby cannot feel pain. In “Nineteen Thirty-Seven,” Josephine tries not to cry in order to suppress her suffering, as well as her mother’s. But Josephine’s mother makes the Madonna statuette cry because her suffering has not died, and she needs to express it somehow. Similarly, in “Women Like Us,” the narrator’s mother compares the sound of her writing to the sound of crying, and the narrator agrees that writing is a form of crying. She writes to express her suffering and the suffering of her ancestors and to keep their painful stories alive. In a way, the whole story collection is one deep cry, expressing the emotional pain of its characters.
In Krik? Krak!, butterflies suggest the understanding of harsh realities. In “Children of the Sea,” the female narrator explains that different butterflies can deliver different messages, but in a troubled country such as Haiti, nearly all the messages are bad ones. When the black butterfly at the end of “Children of the Sea” lands on the female narrator, she knows the male narrator has died. At the end of “The Missing Peace,” Lamort describes Raymond as a soldier who likes butterfly-shaped leaves because she realizes he has embraced the reality of political conflict and violence. The narrator of “Night Women” imagines her son as a butterfly in the middle of a stream because she knows he is too distant for her to protect him. Butterflies are elusive, hard to catch or to control, much like the suffering of the characters. They represent change, the blossoming of a lowly caterpillar into a bigger, greater creature, just as the characters’ daily pain blossoms into greater, unavoidable tragedy.
Braiding suggests the combination of unique strands into a coherent, more beautiful whole, an apt description of what Krik? Krak! does with the characters’ unique stories. Although this symbol appears only in the epilogue, it represents the book as a whole. In the epilogue, the narrator explains that writing is like braiding because it forces separate elements to build a single, unified meaning. It can be challenging, and if the hair doesn’t cooperate, the result isn’t always pretty. But there is something soothing about the process, the rhythmic performance of a skill that is both challenging and routine. To the narrator, it comes naturally. It is also a tradition she has inherited from her mother and her ancestors, who used to braid her hair when she was a child. Although the narrator’s mother doesn’t write or even approve of her writing, the storytelling traditions she has handed down to the narrator are the foundations of her writing. Although the narrator tells stories, or braids, in her own way, she maintains her Haitian inheritance by doing so.
Please wait while we process your payment