The Farming of Bones Summary
02.29.08 Component B
“The Farming of Bones”
By:
~Edwidge Danticat~
Talking about the culture brought throughout this book, your looking at a Latin American culture, specifically the Dominican/Haitian cultures. As I read this book, beyond the many numerous ways she worded her sentences and how the characters spoke, they often spoke with a definant difference than you would hear here in common U.S. language. They would constantly use inferences to what they were talking about rather than being direct to what they were saying. Things like, “they say we are the burnt crud at the bottom of the pot.” –Amabelle, this is Amabelle talking to her lover, Sebastian, about how there’s talk about the field workers and the housemaids to the Dominicans, and them being “nothing”, inferring that they are poorer than the Dominicans. Or specifically, the title, “the Farming of Bones”, and mentioned also in the book, talking about how because after a day in the heat of the fields, dodging snakes and rats, brushing up against the razor sharp edges of the sugar cane, the workers find their skin is shredded, their bones being, “closer to the surface than the day before.” Another one being when there was talk about the massacre between men, when a man stood and said,”I’m one of those trees whose roots reach the bottom of the earth. They can cut down my branches, but they will never uproot the tree. The roots are too strong and there are too many.” There are also inferences, I believe in the beginning when they talk about, when Señora Valencia gives birth to twins and when the doctor finally arrives to check on the newborns' health, he says to Amabelle, "Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other." Here is where I feel another inference is posed. How Haiti and the Dominican Republic, racing for resources on the same island, can resemble like the twins in the same belly, both coming up at the same time, yet one to push the other
“The Farming of Bones”
By:
~Edwidge Danticat~
Talking about the culture brought throughout this book, your looking at a Latin American culture, specifically the Dominican/Haitian cultures. As I read this book, beyond the many numerous ways she worded her sentences and how the characters spoke, they often spoke with a definant difference than you would hear here in common U.S. language. They would constantly use inferences to what they were talking about rather than being direct to what they were saying. Things like, “they say we are the burnt crud at the bottom of the pot.” –Amabelle, this is Amabelle talking to her lover, Sebastian, about how there’s talk about the field workers and the housemaids to the Dominicans, and them being “nothing”, inferring that they are poorer than the Dominicans. Or specifically, the title, “the Farming of Bones”, and mentioned also in the book, talking about how because after a day in the heat of the fields, dodging snakes and rats, brushing up against the razor sharp edges of the sugar cane, the workers find their skin is shredded, their bones being, “closer to the surface than the day before.” Another one being when there was talk about the massacre between men, when a man stood and said,”I’m one of those trees whose roots reach the bottom of the earth. They can cut down my branches, but they will never uproot the tree. The roots are too strong and there are too many.” There are also inferences, I believe in the beginning when they talk about, when Señora Valencia gives birth to twins and when the doctor finally arrives to check on the newborns' health, he says to Amabelle, "Many of us start out as twins in the belly and do away with the other." Here is where I feel another inference is posed. How Haiti and the Dominican Republic, racing for resources on the same island, can resemble like the twins in the same belly, both coming up at the same time, yet one to push the other