Krik? Krak ! Literary Analysis

Living in Haiti, people may think that they aren’t free because of their countries spotted history with the general freedoms that are allowed in America. Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat is a novel that explores the terrible things that happen, and have happened in Haiti and how these hardships affects those that have lived through them. The novel is about the Haitian people who have gone through hard times and just want to be freed from what imprisons them in Haiti, Danticat conveys freedom throughout her novel Krik? Krak!, by showing how people want freedom and what they would do to acquire freedom. People in Haiti have so much to fear because of their country’s spotted history with politics and how people in power would wield that power, that the citizens would never know if they are free. People flee the country on the smallest chance that they could survive, because staying in Haiti and opposing the current government would mean certain death. Just like the man on the boat in “Children of the Sea,” “Perhaps I was chosen… as I
too become a child of the sea.”(24). He went on the boat to reach the United States, because there he would have freedom, whereas in Haiti freedom was just an impossible dream. Haitians no longer want to be restricted by a corrupt, power-hungry government, but want to live their life in a much safer place. A place where you are free to practice any religion, have any political views and where you are free from the bars of tyrannical society. For some, freedom doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t have full control over them, but that there is no pressure from others.
As is stated in the “Epilogue: Women Like Us” where the narrator feels pressure from her mother, “The fragile sky has terrified you your whole life… thousands of years.”(195). The narrator is under pressure to live up to the standard set by her mother, because her mother sacrificed so much for her. So she just wants freedom from the stress of that pressure. Another example of a want for relief of pressure is when Guy jumps off of the hot air balloon in “A Wall of Fire Rising,” “‘Do you want to close the eyes?’... ‘No leave them open,’ Lili said. ‘ My husband, he likes to look at the sky.’”(67) All Guy ever wanted to do was to reach the sky to where the pressure to give his son a good life was ever so small. The pressure is taken away when people go to the place where their imagination soars like an
eagle. Finally, for some people feel like freedom is death, or leaving the entrapment of Earth behind. Just like the narrator in “The Missing Peace” says, “‘My grandmother would be mad if I get killed.”(102) This passage shows that the narrator won’t care if she gets to leave the world, she wants to be free from her body on earth. She wants to be left alone, so that she could lead a different life, that she wouldn’t have to follow the rules set to her by people around her. She is more concerned about how her death would affect the people around her, not how her death would end her journey on Earth. In the novel Danticat portrays the theme of freedom, because people would do anything except live the rest of their life in Haiti. Haitian people who go through hardships don’t want pressure from others, don’t want to be ruled by a tyrannical government, and don’t want to go through any more hardships in Haiti. Unlike people who have lived their entire life in a free country, Haitians have never had such an opportunity and just want to be free. Danticat shows what happens in Haiti and how all of the people that have lived there deal with their hardships.