KK Blog post #4

1. There are a lot of characters' names are not mentioned in the book, do you think the author did it on purpose, or she just did not get the names from the people who she got the story from?

In my opinion, the author Danticat did this on purpose for reasons like protecting people who told her stories that they have experienced by themselves; allowing readers to relate more if there are no specific names, readers can easily put themselves into the story. I will use the story "Children of the Sea." This is the story that where main characters do not have names at all, some of the sub-characters have names, such as Celianne. In the story, the two lovers' name is both not given, but the details of the separation and all the sadness they go under through are really vivid. The reason why we pay more attention to what they have been through rather than to figure out who the characters are. The author did this, is because she thinks names are not important, she thinks their experiences and the sadness, anger, happiness, and all kinds of emotions are more important than two words of names. With not given names and no background information of their families allow us to pay attention to more literature part and try to understand characters emotion and even about there personalities. For example, "They say behind the mountains are more mountains. Now I know it's true, ... whose names don't matter to anyone but themselves." (Danticat 3) In these couple sentences, we can find out that this character which is the male narrator is well-educated regarding using proper grammar, fonting, capitalizing, and even write sentences like poems. Also, we can pull out information that Danticat gave us in the last sentence, she uses the male narrator's voice claim that she thinks names are not important to others only to people themselves, which in my interpretation is that we do not need to know about their names, which would well explain that there are no names in this story specifically. Also, this is sort of foreshadowing for all the stories that don't have names for main characters. 

2. Why is there a big difference between Grace's relationship with Hermine and Caroline's relationship with Hermine? 

In my opinion, the most obvious reason is that Grace is the one who was born in Haiti when Hermine and her husband are having a hard life. However, Caroline is born in the US when they have a better life which basically means more money. Before Grace gets her passport, she feels left out from her own family. From the beginning of the story "Caroline's Wedding," "I heard her clapping, the way she had applauded our good deeds when Caroline and I were little girls..... 'The passport, weren't you going to bring it to the post office to get a passport right away?' she asked in Creole." (Danticat 139) From these sentences, we can easily tell that how excited Hermine is when she knows that Grace is an official American citizen, and from where Hermine hurry Grace to the post office to get the passport, we can also feel that Hermine thinks to be an American citizen is really important. But, as we all know Caroline was born as an American citizen, so Hermine might show slightly different in treating Caroline than Grace. And, because of Hermine's different treatment on two sisters, that create Grace as an obedient child, who hardly go against her mother's requirements, maybe Grace is afraid that Hermine will leave her or something. However, Caroline always disobey Hermine, for instance, Hermine asked two sisters to attend a woman's funeral, Caroline refused to go, also the Mass for Haitian refugees. Grace, on the other hand, she attended every single one of them. The biggest disobedient between Caroline and Hermine would be Caroline's wedding, Hermine wants her to marry a Haitian man, who can help her to know more about her hometown, and continue to pass on the culture and never forgets it. However, Caroline wants to marry an American man whose name is Eric. She can do these things, is because she never feels the pressure from Hermine as Grace did, the pressure comes from nationality.