English essay - ‘Aline’s journey’
We have all heard sad stories of people being lost in the system, and losing all hope for a good future. This is the story which ‘Alines Journey’ deals with.
In ‘Alines Journey’ we follow the escape of young Aline, who is also the narrator, and her family from Haiti to the Miami, America. Aline is also the main character of the story, and from the start her father gives her high hopes of leaving a poor Haiti and going to a safe and nice America, even though she feels a bit nervous and sad leaving her home as we see in this extract:
“Sometimes when it rains, our rooms get flooded and we must go inlands to escape the water. [..]’ Imagine Aline. Now when it rains we can stay inside our house in Miami. No more waiting for the flood waters to die down before returning to our beds.’“ (p. 12 ll. 5-10)
The family is forced to leave Haiti because of Aline’s father’s involvement in anti-government meetings and in perpetuation of these, death threats from a powerful man of the government (p.16). Aline though is not aware of this from the beginning, and feels sad, that she has to leave her home and friends behind. Especially she feels hurt that she cannot say goodbye to her friends (p. 13). This is an example of Alines small-girl innocence, which she upholds throughout the story. As a reader it is not very hard to see through the story and figure out what is happening, but Aline herself is in the beginning more or less oblivious of the real situation, only tagging along to her parents, and doing what she is told and referencing it to the reader with a profound straightforwardness. But Alines exhibited innocence and childishness also makes the language of the short story more or less untrustworthy. Sentences like this “All we do is watch television all day. No other type of recreation.”(p. 15 ll. 27-28) where the choice of words gives the story a vibe of being told by a 58 year old professor of Cambridge rather than a 5-7 year old Haitian girl sadly moves the focus of the story away from the little girl’s situation and pecks quite a bit off of the stories credibility.
When speaking of Aline it also important to notice the transformation of the little girl. In the start she is a quite normal girl concerned with her friends, and her little blue dress. But the flight from Haiti and involvement in the (gruesome) American immigration system takes a lot of her childishness and replaces it with concern of the fate of her father and the rest of her family. This consequently leaves her with nothing, but the memory of her old life not even sparing her the old blue dress, her only memory of home. Thus leaving her hopeless and without dreams (p. 17).
The atmosphere of the story, also told through the eyes of Aline, is very dim and kind of sad. In the start she describes her home town as safe and a nice place to live, but during the trip the atmosphere gets gloomier and after the arrival in Miami the atmosphere borders on the depressing. Aline, her mother and little brother is separated from the father, and put in a locked and closed excuse of a hotel. Here they sit with no recreation but television in a language they do not speak. Afterwards the family is deemed to go back to their life in and the danger of Haiti. This atmosphere gives a picture the American system of immigration being ghastly and inhuman while depriving innocent immigrants of their hopes and dreams. A point even more effectively put through when it is the hopes and dreams of only a little innocent girl which they destroy.
In conclusion, ‘Alines Journey’ gives of the story a little girl’s unfair and cruel fate. A girl who unwillingly is torn from her unsafe home and thrown into a system of unnecessary bureaucracy and deprivation, which destroys the life of an innocent family. The story comes effectively across with its critique of America’s treatment of illegal immigrants, but is essentially flawed by a untrustworthy language.