Response to Children of the Sea

Children of the Sea was written by Edwidge Danticat. This story is a collection of letters that a boy and a girl have been writing to each other. They are both in their teens. I find this to be an interesting story about life in Haiti, because people don't really talk much about Haiti or other poor countries. Only when there's a catastrophe or tragedy then people would start talking about them. I like how the author wrote the story as a collection of letters because then we will know about people's experiences first hand.

In the letters the readers discover the bad conditions that Haiti is in. The boy is part of a group of people call the Youth Federation who opposes the government. They have a radio station that talks about how bad the government is. Well the government doesn't like to be opposed so they sent in soldiers to kill anyone that opposes them because they see them as a threat. So, they are hunting for anyone that is part of the Youth Federation and so the boy had fled and has taken a boat to go to the U.S. The girl that he writes to doesn't go on with him, she stays at her house in Haiti with her family. One person that was in the Youth Federation was "run over by a car" and when the soldiers gave the body of the people they killed back to their families only the person's head remained.

The letters describe the boy's daily life on the boat. There are many people on the boat, one of them was a pregnant women name Celianne. She's only fifteen and she said she got pregnant by a soldier. The boat have a few cracks in it and they have to fill it with tar, but soon they ran out of tar. Soon the boat starts to sink and people were asked to throw away things overboard. Celianne threw her baby overboard for it was dead already and then she jumped in the water to and they both sank. The boy had been keeping a notebook and writing everything down that happens on the boat. Now they ask him to throw away his notebook and so he did after writing down one last letter. He threw it overboard and jumped in the water as well. At the end of the story there's news that a boat have sank but it's not positive that it was the boat the boy was on.

 Life for the girl was much different. Her family and her hides all day in their house because they're afraid to come out. There's a gasoline ban so they couldn't get gas to move away, so they're waiting for the ban to be lifted then they were going to leave town. Soldiers in the town makes the children sleep with their parents and if they don't listen to their orders they'll be killed. Eventually they moved to a better place away from the violence. But the soldiers found them and was going to take the girl away but her father bribed them and so they just went away.

This was an interesting story and I'll recommend people to read it if they have not or has not finished yet.