Essay On Hope In A Wall Of Fire Rising, By Krik Krak

Is it really possible to have hope even through the roughest of times? Hope, a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. In Haiti living a stress free, careless life is impossible. Everyone is poor and living in poverty. This lifestyle affects all aspects of the Haitian life. In the book Krik Krak, a series of short stories, the author Danticat uses juxtaposition to create indifferent characters that in return create the overall mood of hope throughout the book. Specific examples of indifferent characters creating the overall mood of hope include a desperate woman, a restless mother, and a depressed father.

In the short story Between the Pool and the Gardenias, Marie the narrator is a woman who has suffered many miscarriages. Marie being so desperate for love, has become delusional. She finds a dead baby, cradles the child as if it were one of her own, and tells it about all of her losses. “she looked the way that I had imagined all my little girls would look, the ones my body could never hold”(Danticat 92). But after reciting her mother’s prayers she

realizes she is indifferent and her hopes of doing good for the world become at grasp again. “I always knew they would come back and claim me to do good for somebody”(Danticat 95). The character’s change from grieving over her restless life, to having fate in her future creates a mood of hope.
Short story Night Woman is narrated by a young prostitute who mothers a young boy. When her clients come after dawn she tells her son that they are angles although she knows they are anything but angles. “He arrives bearing flowers as though he's come to court me. Hows your wife? I ask, Not as beautiful as you”(Danticat 87). After her clients leave and she is left with her sleeping son she realizes her place in the world being an indifferent woman, of the day and night. “There are two kinds of woman's: day woman and night woman. I am stuck between the day and night in a golden amber bronze”(Danticat 84). In addition to the character’s change as she realizes that all that matters is the happiness of her son, and that she can support her family.
In the short story A Wall of Fire Rising, Guy is a restless man who is the husband to a blissful wife, and a father to an inspiring son.

Guy is frustrated that he can not provide the security and future that he had always wanted for his family. “ I remember my father who was a very poor struggling man all his life. I remember him as a man I would never want to be”(Danticat 75). After Guy talking to his wife, he comes to the conclusion that his son and wife are better off without him, where he then commits suicide. “Little Guy was breathing quickly as he looked at his father’s body on the ground. While the formann draped a sheet over Guy’s corpse”(Danticat 78). Guy longed for his freedom so bad that he killed himself to reach it. This change of the character seeing no future for his family and himself, to sacrificing himself so his son will be at more chance to succeed conveys the mood of

hope.
A desperate woman, a restless mother, and a depressed father are all examples of indifferent characters that create the mood of hope throughout the book. Danticat, the author of Krik Krak, uses juxtaposition thru indifferent characters to emphasize the mood of hope throughout the book. From an opposing view one may say that Danticat’s use of juxtaposition creates a hopeless feel for the book, but with an understanding that the characters are indifferent and in such poverty that it is clear that the mood is full of hope. Different views of the juxtaposition used may convey different moods for different readers, but based off the actions and insight into the character's mindset, hope is what the book surrounds itself by.