Caroline's Wedding Notes 10/24


Themes:
Family love
Generation gap
Cultural differences
Identity
Heritage
Marriage concerns
Racism
Immigration




Characters:

  • Grace- older sister and narrator of the story =, unmarried 
  • Caroline- younger sister who gets married to a Bahamian man, she only has 1 arm due to a shot her mother got while in prison that may have messed up her pregnancy 
  • Ma- mother who strongly disapproves of marrying outside Haitian blood
  • Eric Abrahams- Bahamian husband, who is slightly darker than Caroline 
  • Father- died of prostate cancer ten years earlier, when the girls where in high school
  • Mrs. Ruiz- hispanic neighbor 


Setting:
NYC
the family lives in Brooklyn


Outline:

  • Grace gets naturalized as a citizen, she finally feels secure living in America once becoming a citizen she later reveals this
  • Caroline is engaged to a Bahamian man named Abraham. She met him while she was in school. He was a janitor
  • Ma makes bone soup everynight because she thinks it will cure anything, even her daughters mind about marrying outside of Haitian blood
  • she is very against Caroline marrying this man and this is very apparent through the story 
  • the mother is very traditional and sees her daughters as "americanized"
  • She wanted her daughter to have a church wedding and do many of the traditional things that come with a wedding. Eric and Caroline opt to get married in a judges office 
  • Mother tells the story how she was married to their father. very old school with the parents actually carrying out the proposal 
  • She was not head over heels in love with their father either the mother admits, and she wouldn't mind to marry someone else. 
  • The father also needed to get married to someone else in order to get his family to America to beat the system 
  • The mother makes the daughters mourn the father for 18 months, however the daughter never completely follow the mothers wishes
  • They are Christian, but they follow cultural rituals when it comes to mourning the dead
  • They are supposed to wear all black clothing and blood red panties so the father will not come back into their lives or dreams
  • However the daughters do not wear the red panties and they want there father to come back in their dreams. they wear black panties that actually invite the father back into their lives
  • Many of there dreams include there father
  • Grace decided to throw her sister a bridal shower as the made of honor, the mother says that she should not go out on a limb to do so
  • Caroline reluctantly accepts the shower and they keep it small and do not invite the mothers friends since they also would disapprove the marriage.
  • they mother and daughters go to Eric's house for dinner and he cooks. Caroline says he is a good cook
  • The mother does not eat much of the food and this is noticed by the daughters
  • Ma also does not want to accept her daughters last  name will soon be "Abraham" even though it sounds Haitian 
  • The mother refers to Eric as a retard on one occasion because he talks slow
  • She cannot accept that Eric is a good guy and her daughters marriage could be better than her own
  • She says Caroline is false lead because this is the first man to ask her anything and she says "The heart is like a stone. We never know what is in the middle"
  • The father and mother feared that this would happen to Caroline 
  • The day of the wedding Caroline is extremely nervous 
  • But her mother is surprisingly supportive and gets her through her pre marriage butterflies. She finally shows her support to her daughter and says she was the same way during her wedding day
  • Caroline puts a prostectic arm on for the ceremony and once they get engaged the mother doesn't really say much
  • it is still hard for her to accept but she doesn't bash the groom either 
  • Grace says a nice toast at the restaurant, something her mother would say.
  • Her mother even admits to it being a nice toast
  • Caroline leaves on good terms and the mother is slowly starting to see that this marriage may have been best for Caroline 
  • She sees that her daughter needs to be able to make her own decisions in life and that she does not own her as her parents owned her

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Footloose Review of Winter Musical

On Wednesday night February 27th, I decided to attend the Cheshire Academy varsity production of the musical "Footloose" in the black box theater. This was a dress rehearsal for the actual performance that took place on the first weekend of March. "Footloose" was written by Dean Pitchford, and Walter Bobbie in 1998. An interesting fact about "Footloose" is that the musical came out after the movie in 1984. Many times it is the movie that is made after the book or play. For the Cheshire Academy production, notable cast members included: Tony Wang, Olivia Williamson, Aaron Luo, along with 10 graduating seniors. "Footloose" is a musical play that many high school students can relate to. Ren McCormack is a teen from Chicago, who doesn't really fit in anywhere. Ren moves to a small town in the middle of nowhere. He loves to dance, but in this town dancing is illegal. This is because of Reverend Moore's son died in a drunk driving car crash ...
Read more

My Love, My Love or The Peasant Girl

Setting: Caribbean Island Island: Jewel of the Antilles Rich- don't believe in Gods/modernized/French  Peasants people- old ways/religion rural setting/workplace for most likely slaves Characters: Asaka- godess of earth and all growing things Agwe- God of sea and all the waters M. Bienconnu- the village centenarian, who is a older women Ti Moune-  Désirée (real name) An african orphan girl who is dreaming of cars and possibly a way out of this life she is limited to now. Real parents stuck her in the mango tree and they died Mama Euralie-Peasant, adopted mother and believes that Désirée is a gift from the Gods to her Tonton Juliet- Peasant, adopted father, who does not want to take the burden of a child. But he does love her Plot: Chapter 1: There are two classes of people living on the island but chapter 1 brings mostly aspects of the peasant way of life. They are very religious, and they look to the Gods for survival. Polythesism is a believe in many ...
Read more

In class writing 5-7

Something that made each poetry recital unique is the performance and interpretations each actor had for their poems. Poetry is very adaptive and can be recited in many ways. For example, Leslie and Nan’s performances really stood out to me becuase they chose to sing verses of their poems. The music they chose had no relation to the original poem, but they made it flow as if the poem was perfect for the song. Their performances turned out great, and were by far my favorites of the class! Jack’s recital and performance I felt was kind of dry. He displayed very little movement on stage, and he was very hard to hear. Both of these things effective his overall performance negatively. On the bright side, I felt that Jack did a great job of picking his wardrobe, and was by far the most flashy dressed actor of the group.  When it comes to my performance I felt I could of been a little more engaging to the audience by adding music/sound since it seemed as if this was a constant strategy u...
Read more