Blog 6 Common Theme

Love is a perpetual topic in our times. A defining characteristic of people is the degree to which they are always willing to protect their lovers. In three different stories that have three different background information. There’s one common theme around these three stories, which is love. In Children of The Sea, it showed both the love between a man to a woman and also a love between a father and his daughter. Then, in 1937, it showed readers the love between a mom and her daughter. Moreover, in the story The Fire Rising, it showed a theme of love around a family, especially between Guy and Lili. In different stories, the author used different elements to show the love between main characters. In Children of The Sea, the author used the butterfly and black butterfly as elements to show love. Also, in 1937 author used Madonna cry as an important element to represent love. Moreover, in The Fire Rising, the author used hot air balloon as the main element. Even though people is willing to pursue these important elements, they also lose their lives when they show their love. In these three different stories, three main characters died in three different ways, one died under water, second died on the ground, the third one jumped from the balloon. The author wanted to use this death to remind readers that even they donated their life on the way of showing love, but love still is the most important element in people’s live, whatever you are in the peaceful era or in chaos.
In the Children of The Sea, the author used two fonts to show the male lover and female lover. Even though they are been separated by female lover’s dad. However, it shows the readers that dad really loves his daughter. Because of the love, dad is willing to protect his daughter out of danger. Which in the scene where the macouts wanted to snatch his daughter away by force, dad gave all his money to soldiers in order to save her. From this scene, readers can get a feeling of love between dad and daughter even daughter always does not understand about this. Moreover, the love between female lover and the male lover. Male lover is in a boat to go to America, but in the end, he knew he can not arrive America, so he wrote down the line “ Maybe the sea is endless, like my love for you.” Also, for a female lover, she also continued writing letters even though she knew that maybe male lover could not see them in the future, but both of them did not stop, did not give up. So author used this story to tell the readers that even though there’s a big disaster in front you, you still can not give up, because the disaster may also kill you, lover, you need to do your best in order to protect you and your lover.
In 1937, the author explains the love between a mom and her daughter and also between mom and her belief. Mom is a character who believes in voodoo but it was banned from the Dominican Republic. Because of this, mom was imprisoned and Josephine came to prison in order to see her. But when she went to the prison, she also carried that Madonna, which is an important represent in mom’s belief. The author explained that because Josephine wanted to know the secret of Madonna cry, so she carried it, however, I believe the truth is that Josephine wanted to make her mom happy and even though this Madonna is a dangerous object at that time period. But she still took it and during her second and third visit, she wanted to hug with her mom to comfort her. But mom refused because she was afraid to pass this cough to her daughter. For the love between mom and Josephine, maybe Josephine can not feel how important this love is. Because for her mom, this love supports her to survive, because she believes in Voodoo, so she experienced that massacre on the Massacre River. She can not forget this experience but she did not want her daughter to involve in. The power of love gives her strength facing to the death peacefully, but also the love inspires Josephine, let her understand her mom that’s why in the end she said: “ Let her flight be joyful, and mine and yours too.” She began to understand her mom and love makes her have the encourage to face the past and began willing to know what happened in the past.
Moreover, in the story The Wall of Fire Rising, I did not figure out that is that the love gives Guy the courage to pursue his dream of driving hot air balloon or the love makes him do the choice so recklessly. Because Guy is a worker in the Assads so he knew how to drive the balloon, and because he did not want to be a person like his father who stayed in poverty in his whole life. At the same time, Little Guy’s line about liberation and pursuing dream encourages him to pursue his dream, at this point, I think because of the love from Guy to Lili and Little Guy, he wanted to pursue his dream. That is the reason he went on the balloon. Compared with other two stories in Krik Krak, I felt this story is different because another two stories used to love as an encouragement for main characters to face death peacefully. But for this one, I think the love became a catalyst for Guy to feel death quickly. Maybe at this point, author wanted to remind readers that even love is powerful and it can give people a support for them to do anything, but love can not really give all things you wanted, it is a double sided sword, when you wanted to jump out from reality, the first thing people should consider is your own ability to do this thing.
For all three stories in Krik? Krak! The author used three different types of love to represent the whole society structure, which she really did and made the readers feel about her feeling. One thing really interests me in the way the story presents this theme is about how people use to love to release pressure because even three of them contained love, but love holds different meaning for each character in the story.  Love can give people encourage but also it can let one person lose his ration.