Answering Peer Questions

1. In what ways is the story of Caroline's Wedding similar to the epilogue? Use quotes from both stories to support your answer.

The mother/daughter relationship in both stories are similar in many ways. Both mothers in each story disapprove on a decision that there daughters have made. In "Caroline's Wedding," Caroline's mother cannot stand the fact that her Haitian daughter is marrying a Bahamian man. She refers to her daughters fiancé as "retarded" in the story and doesn't think her daughter should get married to anyone outside of Haitian blood. "If she wanted to make me happy, you know what she would do. She will never find someone Haitian." Caroline's mother cannot past the point of her fiancé not being Haitian. This forces her to believe that her daughter is getting married for the right reasons, and that she jumped on the first opportunity that presented itself for her to get married due to her only having one arm. This is how her mother thinks for majority of the story. In the epilogue, Dandicat's mother is very unsupportive of her daughters chosen career path to become a writer. Dandicats mother is a very traditional women who thinks women only have two jobs in there life. "Always use your ten fingers, which in her parlance meant that women should be the best cook and housekeeper. Never have sex before marriage and don't enjoy sex because your husband will not respect you."  Both mothers are very old school, and follow the traditions that were passed down to them. They do not identify as Haitian-American, as there daughters do. This leads to great conflicts and a strained relationship between both mothers and daughters.



2.) What is the significance of not naming characters in a lot of Danticats stories?

Danticat does not name many of the characters in her story to show that they are interchangeable. With not naming characters, it is easier to think about things on a broader perspective. By not naming the characters helps the reader see that many of the brutalities and deaths Danticat writes about could be happening to more people than just the ones in each story. "In Children of the Sea" both narrators are unnamed because there situations are very common for many people that lived in Haiti. The male narrator is writing from a sinking boat and we can make the assumption due to later allusions in the story that many of the people aboard do not survive the incident. "Perhaps I was chosen from the beginning of time to live there with Agwe at the bottom of the sea." This quote shows that the narrator along with many others may have suffered this fate. The female narrator is writing her narrative from the island of Haiti. She and her family are trying to escape from the chaos that surrounds them. They eventually leave and find some temporary protection from isolating themselves in the mountains. The main idea that I believe that Danticat is aiming for, is to show that these characters are insignificant when put up to the bigger picture, that many Haitians suffered and faced similar incidents and fates as the ones she as written in "Children of the Sea" along with all the other stories.