Hope In Edwidge Danticat's Children Of The Sea

This photograph describes what Haiti looks like for miles. Destruction and devastation. The lost, worried family and the remains of the hurricane are the most prominent elements of this photograph. When looking at this picture the eye is drawn the the dirty, young girl. She expresses sadness and concern.

Hope is always needed in dark situations to help you surpass the suffering. This is true in most cases where death may lie. In the book Fever 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson, the Author shows just what a grim disease my do to you, your loved ones, and everyone else on this planet. In the book, a 13 year old girl, Marie, Lives a normal life in Philadelphia until the day comes during the summer of 1793 were the fever strikes it's first few victims. She is forced to try and survive not only the sickness but the people, and places around her.

They connected through their faith and turned it into hope. After the Haitian earthquake, “...members from all three communities had expressed a great deal of ‘faith’ in ‘God,’ and had stressed the importance of faith and spirituality in their ability to continue to live day by day, even with recurrent aftershocks, six months after the earthquake, ‘because we did not die in the earthquake’” (Rahill 594). This quote shows that their faith held strong because they did not die in the earthquake exemplifying their resilience. It increased their ability to endure and unite together as a community.

Hope motivates many characters in the book A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini but it motivates Mariam the most. For example, when Bibi jo had brought news of Jalil daughters going to a real school, Mariam got caught up in the idea of going to school as the author states “Since then, thoughts of classrooms and teachers had rattled around Mariam 's head, images of notebooks with lined pages, columns of numbers, and pens that made dark, heavy marks.” ( Hosseini 17). This demonstrates how Mariam motivates herself in hope for going to a real school. Instead of getting frustrated and down that Jalil’s other daughters were going to school, Mariam takes the idea that girls her age are going to school and turns it into hope.

Children have a bigger chance of having a better future than their parents or ancestors. In the novel “Krik? Krak!”, the author Edwidge Danticat uses the motifs of babies/children and generations to illustrate that Haitians survive off of hope for the future and for change. She does this in order to present the idea that Haitians create their own hope, or false hope, in order to get through hard times. When Haitians lose hope, they lose their will to live.

In the Merrriam-Webster dictionary, hope is defined as; to cherish a desire with anticipation. However, those words don't convey the meaning deep enough, hope is more than that. Hope is a feeling deep in the gut, a motivating force, for some hope is everything. Hope must be stronger than any fear and it must have fight in it. Lina Vilkas, a fifteen year old Lithuanian, she fights for hope.

When darkness consumes you and the pain becomes unbearable, you look to the light, to perseverance to guide you through the nightmare you face. In Ruta Sepetys’ Salt to the Sea, one of the protagonists, Emilia, faces a myriad of emotional and physical hardships throughout the novel. With calamitous tragedies and bone-chilling circumstances, what does Emilia do? Bruised and battered, she perseveres through her hardships, showing how much a person can endure when they persist. Sepetys takes the consequences of Emilia’s pain and emotional damage to new heights with her war-themed novel; as a result of this, perseverance is articulated amongst many other traits that this character possesses, showing how imperative of a quality it is.

Even though there is a possibility this may not happen she still holds onto hope. She holds on to hope, telling herself that things will get better in the future,

Every day I yearned for my mother's touch. Haiti is one of the poorest countries, but to me Haitian people are one of the most hard-working groups that I know of. That is one of the reasons that I always work hard. I didn’t come from riches and I was not brought up with the mindset of waiting for someone to hand me the

Desperation and hope. One can easily see the juxtaposition. It seems simple, a thoughtless task. They are clearly polar opposites. Desperation is morose and needing and hope is jubilant and glorious.

Haiti is traditionally known to be a poor, rural, and undeveloped country. In Dieumeme Noelliste’s article titled “Poverty and The Gospel: The Case of Haiti” she states that although

When it comes to being a tyrant and having so much trauma, the story “Drown” speaks to many who are both suffering from a tyrant and trauma. The characters in the story suffer a lot because they have to endure. The setting of the book is taken place in the Dominican Republic where many live in poverty. Yunior, is a character that suffers from being in a trauma his whole life. The trauma begins when Yunior was 4 years old and his father leaves him and his family.

For the Discussion Assignment of this week, I chose the Haitian story "Ghosts" by Edwidge Danticat. I chose this story because it shook me a little. It tells about the poor conditions of Haitian slums such as Bel Air in Port-au-Prince, "the Baghdad of Haiti" (Danticat, 2008, p. 1), and in particular the disadvantaged life of Pascal Dorien, a young boy from a good family who wanted to report the rude situation of his neighborhood by becoming a radio journalist. Unfortunately, the tough criminal situation in there, melted with the daily routine of his parents ' restaurant, where local gang bosses used to chill, dragged him in a vicious circle. He has been charged with several crimes unfairly and then released.

I really like this book because Karana never gave up and was able to sustain on the island alone. Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. Karana had hope in the white men coming back to rescue her. She had hope that she would be able to save her brother from being stuck on the island.

The poem “Sea of Faith” is about “freshmen” students and professor. Furthermore, it alludes to the professor’s deep thoughts on a “dumb” question about “Sea of Faith.” ‘A young woman” asks about the realism of the “Sea of Faith,” and this makes John Brehm question the intelligence of the “freshmen” students (line 8). He is shocked and confused how little that “freshman” knows. In the real world, professors encourage students to ask questions since there is no such thing like “a stupid” question, although, for the fact, only professors know how ridiculous student’s queries can be.