Edwidge Danticat And The Dew Breaker

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Throughout literature in history, women have been viewed through many lenses. The treatment of women ranges from degrading horror stories, to the reciprocal stories of women’s justice and triumph. Two authors in particular, Edwidge Danticat and Graham Greene, take one perspective on women. Danticat, being a strong woman herself, relates her own encounters with men to “The Dew Breaker.” In the same light light, Greene objectifies women in “The Power and he Glory.” Both novels view women through the eyes of the common man, restricting women’s social freedom and dignity. In the novel “The Dew Breaker,” by Edwidge Danticat, women are viewed as inferior to men. Danticat uses her personal experiences as a Haitian woman to create characters in her book. …show more content…

The best representation of this is found in the chapter titled “The Funeral Singer.” This chapter involves three women from Haiti trying to attain a degree in the English language. Together, they gather at a Haitian restaurant to do their homework. One of the students, Rézia, owns the restaurant. Through their studies, the women are able to socialize and share stories of their past. The chapter portrays the agony of all three women. We learn that they were forced to flee after Mariselle’s husband is shot. The narrator verbalizes her feelings by saying; “Four scones and seven tears ago, our fathers blew up this condiment,” to convey the women’s personal suffering (Danticat 165). Rézia, another one of the women, tells how she had been treated as an item and raped by a man while she is sleeping at her aunt’s business. Danticat writes; “She said this man had threatened to put her in prison if she didn’t let him have it that night,” supporting the argument that women were viewed as items (173). It is clear that Danticat uses Rézia, as well as the other two women, to show how unfairly women are being treated. All of the women in the book have

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