Sacrifices are driven from desperation for something greater. This idea is conveyed various times in the novel, Krik? Krak!. Edwidge Danticat, the author, collaborates many short stories about Haitians and the struggles they go through in Haiti and America. In Krik? Krak!, Danticat illustrates that hope for a greater future makes people sacrifice and take risks, despite the hardships that follow.
In many of Danticat’s stories, parents sacrifice themselves and risk everything for the hopeful future of their children. Danticat represents this idea in her story “1937”, which focuses on Josephine and her mother, who was pregnant with her on the day of a bloody massacre and jumped into a river for the survival of Josephine and her life ahead. Josephine …show more content…
Danticat demonstrates this in the first chapter, “Children of the Sea”, in which a group of people leave Haiti on a boat for Miami. The story focuses on people on the boat, including Celianne, a girl that was raped and became pregnant. After she knows she is pregnant, she finds about a boat, and immediately goes on board with the hope of a better life with her newborn baby. Danticat highlights that “she started throwing up and getting rashes. Next thing she knew, she was getting big. She found out about the boat and got on”(21). She adds, “She threw it overboard… And quickly after that she jumped in too. And just as the baby’s head sank, so did hers”(23). Celianne sacrifices everything back in Haiti and gets on the boat with high ambitions for a superior life with her and her daughter. Eventually, she dies along with her dead baby, but Celianne sacrifices everything for a better life. Sacrifice can also be found in “A Wall of Fire Rising”, another story in which a guy, Guy, yearns for freedom. He tells his wife Lili, “ ‘I’d like to sail off somewhere and keep floating [hot air balloon] until I got to a really nice place with a nice plot of land where I could be something new’ ”(61). Guy expresses his desires for freedom and ultimately leaves his wife and son behind and flies the hot air