The Diversity of Suffering
The stories in Krik? Krak! demonstrate that everyone
experiences suffering in his or her own unique way. The characters in the
collection come from diverse backgrounds and have very different
experiences, but to a certain extent, they all share the same pain. The
despair of Célianne in “Children of the Sea” as she throws herself into the
ocean is felt by the male narrator of the same story when he embraces death
and by Grace’s mother in “Caroline’s Wedding” when she goes to a mass for
refugees who, like Célianne, died at sea. But while these and other
characters all see the same horrible things happening to the people and the
nation they love, they all have their own reactions. Guy, in “A Wall of Fire
Rising,” tries to defy his hopelessness by stealing a brief moment of glory,
even though he knows it must end in death. The mother in “New York Day
Women” makes a new life for herself in the United States, but she still
can’t face the suffering she left behind. As Danticat often explains, there
is no universal Haitian experience because the people who suffer remain
individuals.
Family As a Source of Posterity
In a country with a violent, complicated past, stories are passed on
from mothers to daughters to preserve a sense of history and create a record
for the future. In “The Missing Peace,” Emilie tells Lamort they should
write down what has happened for posterity, but Lamort answers that she has
posterity in the form of her family. She means that she has inherited her
mother’s and her grandmother’s experiences, and when she is old, her own
daughters will inherit her experiences. Similarly, Josephine’s mother tells
her in “Nineteen Thirty-Seven” that her birth made up for her grandmother’s
death. Death broke one link in the family chain, but a new one was formed.
Many of the characters in Krik? Krak! sense the presence of
their dead ancestors and feel connected to their pain. They understand their
place in the world in terms of their mothers’ and ancestors’ experiences,
and they pass these experiences on to their children in order to keep the
family history alive. In the epilogue, “Women Like Us,” the narrator
explains that these past experiences are what fuel her writing, giving her
oppressed ancestors a voice.
The Dangerous Power of Hope
Hope has the power to give people strength in times of suffering, but
it also threatens to blind them to reality. Most of the characters in
Krik? Krak! hold on to hope in order to keep themselves
alive. In “Night Women,” the narrator makes up stories about an angel coming
to rescue her and her son in order to hide the truth from him, but she also
uses these stories to escape the harsh reality of her life. Similarly, in
“Seeing Things Simple,” Princesse avoids the world around her by dreaming of
becoming an artist and immersing herself in the reality of a foreign
painter. These characters survive by denial and wait for the day when such
denial will no longer be necessary. However, this coping strategy can be
dangerous. In “Between the Pool and the Gardenias,” Marie’s hope becomes a
delusion when she pretends to find the daughter she always wanted. This
fantasy leads her to hold on to the baby even as it begins to rot, and she
is finally arrested when the pool-cleaner, whom Marie had convinced herself
cared about her, accuses her of witchcraft. Several other characters find
out that too much hope can result in crippling despair when reality sets
in.
