Summary Of Edwidge Danticat's 'Night Women'

The famous philosopher, Albert Camus once said: "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." Freedom is something that all humans value. Having the ability to do pretty much whatever you when you want is a privilege not a right. Unlike in the United States where we have that benefit, in Haiti the government has stripped that liberty from its own people with the new regime oppressing the citizens. Throughout the novel, Krik? Krak!, Edwidge Danticat suggest that death, water, and flight are the only methods to obtain freedom as a citizen under the rule of an oppressive government and culture.
The motif of death consistently resurfaces and Danticat uses it to state that death is the only way to free people of the pain that the world constantly brings.

In Night Women the mother must provide for her son by prostitution. Her son’s ignorance of how she gets the money for shelter and food makes her think about if he were to find about her job. She comes up with a simile that is similar to the boys situation: “He is like a butterfly fluttering on a rock that stands out naked in the middle of a stream” (pg.73). In this situation the butterfly can liberate itself by trying to fly and escape to dry land where it safe. “On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly… She leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river” (42). Since Manman had the ability to “fly” it allowed her to elude the clutches of the Dominican pursuiters. Reaching Haitian soil ironically gave her freedom. However, if Manman didn 't possess the power to fly she would have been slaughtered by the Dominican forces just like the rest of the women who failed to successfully cross the Blood