Love In Danticat's Night Woman

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Danticat uses the many short stories in her novel, Krik? Krak, to express the endurance of love and how neither time nor death can tear it apart. The story Children of the Sea expresses this beautifully with the hope of young love. The piece is told through love letters written back and forth between a boy and a young girl. In an attempt to flee the oppressive government in Haiti under which he was considered a fugitive, the boy sought passage on a boat. However, in doing this, he had to leave the girl he loved behind. Despite the distance between them and the hurt she feels from him leaving, they continue to write each other letters in the hopes of lessening the distance between them and keeping their love alive until they meet again(7).………. …show more content…

In Night Woman, there is a Lady who earns her living as a prostitute. She hates her job, but she has a son who she loves more than anything so she endures it in order to provide for him. On page 71 the mother states, “The night is the time I dread the most in my life.” The woman loves her son enough that she is willing to work all night doing something she despises in order to make sure he is taken care of. She even makes up lies to ensure her son doesn’t know what she does at night and so that he doesn’t have to see the darkness that is all around him. Caroline’s mother in the story Caroline’s Wedding shows a similar love for her child. Unlike the mother and son in Night woman who live in Haiti, Caroline and her sister and mother live in America. In their family, everyone marries a Haitian person. It has been like this for a long time, so when Caroline is preparing to marry an American man in a very un-Haitian way, her mother is horrified. She desperately wants Caroline to reconsider even though he is a good man. Despite all her complaints, she is there for her daughter when she needs her and she does her best to do her part in the wedding. When asked by her other daughter why this is the mother responds, “ ‘She is my child. You don’t cut your own finger off just because it smells bad.’ ” (159) The mother doesn’t stop loving her daughter even when things get rough and they disagree. She accepts that she cannot keep her daughter from the

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