“A Wall of Fire Rising” by Edwing Danticat

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Discussion
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Edwing Danticat’s A Wall of Fire Rising is a short story about a family that languishes in poverty in Haiti but refuses to give up its dream for a better future. The story has three main characters: Guy, his wife Lili, and their son Little Guy. Despite being at the lowest social rung, this family adheres to a patriarchal order since Guy is the breadwinner whereas Little Guy prepares for a lead role in the school play. Danticat uses a range of literary devices in A Wall of Fire Rising to probe an ordinary couple’s parenting struggles amidst alienating conditions that breed poverty.

Discussion

The authors use vivid descriptions to show the systemic nature of impoverishing conditions in Haiti and their resulting consequences. Through Guy’s family, it becomes clear that Haitians yearn for a revolution to gain true freedom. However, this desire seems highly unlikely as the worst victims of this exploitative social order are secluded in a shantytown. For example, Guy has to endure the most degrading job – cleaning latrines with no protective gear for a pittance. Besides limited opportunities and resources, shantytown dwellers have limited choices over the news they consume as they only have access to a large government-installed television near the sugar mill. To further stress the assault on Haitians’ right to memory and to retell their stories, Danticat writes, “It was obvious that this was a speech written by a European man, who gave to the slave revolutionary Boukman the kind of European phrasing that might have sent the real Boukman turning in his grave” (149). The author suggests that even the kind of history that the children of the oppressed Haitians learn in school is doctored to whitewash the atrocities colonizers meted on the natives, further emphasizing the systemic nature of alienating conditions entrenched in this society.

Poverty and stressful living conditions ultimately affect Guy and Lili’s parenting styles. Although Guy tries to be supportive and affectionate to his son, the denigrating conditions he endures in society arguably motivate him to assert authority over his son to a patronizing level. For example, when Little Guy “mumbled something”, his father “grabbed” “and twirled” his ear into “a tiny ball,” ignoring his agony and proceeding to make “he kneel in the deep grass in punishment” (152). It turns out that the Little Guy was not being disrespectful; he was inaudibly saying his lines. On the other hand, Lili grew compassionate, protective, and preoccupied with her son to the point she neglected her husband. For instance, Guy repeatedly beseeches Lili to “listen” to what happened to him, but every time their son stole attention (148, 151). She openly regrets abandoning her husband when she laments, “I wish I had paid more attention when you came in with the news” (151). Confirming Duncan et al.’s, lasting behavioral and other effects of poverty (5), indigence has distorted this family’s ways of life, including understanding hunger and its root causes. Instead of viewing food as a fundamental human need, they think of the urge for food, hunger, as a vermin that is endemic only to the children of the poor (150). Poverty and alienating life conditions have impacted Guy and his wife’s views towards parenting, ultimately leaving them vulnerable in many ways.

One of the most prominent techniques the author incorporates to emphasize the importance of love and family unity is foreshadowing. Danticat drops subtle hints to show that the string that binds a family and motivates it to endure difficult conditions is love, and severing it could be fatal. Guy has a dream, personified in the hot air balloon, to raise his family above the dilapidated living conditions in Shantytown. Unfortunately, his physical world is filled with barricades despite his imagination being unrestrained. The hot air balloon is behind barbed wire, and it is owned by a foreigner whose family does not care about the dreams of ordinary Haitians. Moreover, the conditions at the sugar mill are rigged to effectively bar him from securing a permanent employment slot. Predicting her husband’s eventual death, for weeks Lili had been feeling that Guy was lost every time “he reached” “twelve feet away from the balloon” (151). These circumstances degrade Guy from a pillar Lili could rely on for support and protection to a distant stranger whose ultimate demise does not register as a surprise.

Conclusion

In conclusion, A Wall of Fire Rising Edwing Danticat is a classical masterpiece that uses different literary devices to explore the complex interplay between alienating conditions breeding poverty and parenting. As seen in the depiction of the shantytown, masters of oppression have weaponized poverty and systemized it. Even what remotely seems like a recount of the experiences of ancestors who tried fighting them has been grossly distorted. This way, those learning history today and motivated to plot a revolution with this distorted memory of history consumed in the school system, have a high likelihood of only accelerating the metamorphosis of the oppressive system that has kept them subjugated for generations. Perhaps the first question contemporary revolutionaries should ask is how much of the history they regurgitate was written by the people they wish to revolve against.

Works Cited

Danticat, Edwidge. “A Wall of Fire Rising.”.” Krik? Krak (1996): 51-80.

Duncan, Greg J et al. “Moving Beyond Correlations in Assessing the Consequences of Poverty.” Annual review of psychology vol. 68 (2017): 413-434.

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“A Wall of Fire Rising” by Edwing Danticat

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