The Wall Of Fire Rising Summary

Imagine yourself somewhere that's much less civilized and orderly than the United States, somewhere that has a corrupt social system, and somewhere that large percentages of the population live in poverty and chaos. Can you survive in a place like this, and can you remain hopeful that one day something will change and alter your destiny? Krik? Krak!, written by Edwidge Danticat, is a fictional book that explores the lives of different characters through an assortment of stories in a place like this. The setting of the stories are mostly in Haiti (Ville Rose and Port-au-Prince), likely during and after the 1970s, while a few are in New York and are about the lives of Haitian families after they came to the United States. The stories in Krik?

In the short story, “The Wall of Fire Rising,” a poor Haitian family, consisting of Guy, Lili, and their son, Little Guy, lives in poverty. This family lives in a one room shack, gathers their meal from scratch, and seldom has their own lamp light. They get excited when Little Guy gets a role as a revolutionary character in his school play, and when Guy gets extra work cleaning bathrooms in a mill. Meanwhile, Guy starts losing hope and dreams of flying the hot air balloon in the mill he works in. Little Guy practices his lines he has to say in his play. Little Guy’s lines in the play are that “There is so much sadness in the faces of my people. I call on the mighty and the weak. I call on everyone and anyone so that we shall all let out one piercing cry that we may either live freely or we should die”(Danticat 71). Even though these lines were about slave rebellion, Guy became emotional after he heard it and probably related it to the poverty he and his family is living in. He doesn’t see any way out of it, besides the hot air balloon and ending his life. Jumping out of the hot air balloon gives something Little Guy can look up to because his father rather jump out of the balloon than continue to live in poverty and be reminded of himself as a poor, struggling man. This is how Haiti’s political instability

Krak! One effect that it had on the characters in Krik? Krak! were that it separated friends and families, like in “Children of the Sea.” Another effect was that the characters were forced to live in poverty, like in “A Wall of Fire Rising.” The last effect was that women endured inequality and suffered from the Haitian social system because they were restricted to only do certain things. Haiti’s political climate was and is extremely unstable and insecure, and I am grateful that I grew up and live in the United States. The United States is more civilized and orderly, and I have everything I need here for a decent