Facing Struggles in Haiti in Edwidge Danticats Novel of...

The short stories in the novel Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat demonstrate the struggles that individuals face and how they react to them. The characters in the stories come from all different backgrounds and experiences but they all seem to share the same sense of suffering and pain. Danticat uses the women in the collections to display the struggles and unhappiness that the people of Haiti faced in the 1960’s. The women, all from different parts of Haiti and also New York, are faced with issues in the work place, in their social lives but most prominently, within their families. Each woman resolves or works to resolve her problems in a complete egotistical and unique way. In Krik? Krak! Danticat uses characterization to display the†¦show more content†¦The woman is bitter because of her husband’s unfaithfulness and turns the betrayal into anger. The lack of a male figure can lead to a woman’s struggle but could also motivate her to be an independent w oman as the girl in â€Å"Between the Pool and the Gardenias† strives to accomplish. In the article â€Å"Krik? Krak!†, Karima Jeffrey discusses how all nine stories in Krik? Krak! are tied together because of the women struggling in every story. She states â€Å"In doing so, the author exhibits the ways in which each individual story is an intricate aspect of Ville Roses larger community, of the islands history, and of the broader history of its expatriates† (Jeffrey). In Krik? Krak!, Danticat utilizes symbolism to link the short stories to one another. One common symbol is butterflies. As mentioned in â€Å"Children of the Sea†, â€Å"besides, manman says that butterflies can bring news. the bright ones bring happy news and the black ones warn us of deaths† (5). In â€Å"Children of the Sea†, light and dark butterflies are displayed throughout the story. At the end of the story, a black butterfly flies around the female narrator and lands on her which leads her to believe that the male she has been writing to is dead. Butterflies also represented the peaceful side of the Haitian life and proved that there could be hope for them in this time period. Butterflies are also mentioned in the short story â€Å"Night Women†. The woman describes her son as a butterfly because of her inability