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Editor's Overview

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Throughout this semester we have examined many different pieces of Caribbean work by many different authors. We have read short stories, poems, and novels on top of the various movies and documentaries as well. While reading, watching and listening to all of these different pieces of work I have found multiple constant themes and artifacts. I have enjoyed the documentaries the most because it gave me a real visual of the islands and its people. The stories and novels enhanced these documentary visuals with deeper meanings that made me think differently of these islands. They helped me look past the beauty of the islands and showed me the dark past they endured. Throughout the texts, I have found that loneliness, water, family, hardships, and death have been a constant in many of the short stories and novels we have read. By using these five artifacts, I went on to find examples that best represented these consistent themes.     When looking at loneliness, I choose to look at t...
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Loneliness

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  The short story of Some People are Meant to be Alone is about a man called Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur lives up on the hill in his old run-down house. "No, it was the fact that he lived all alone; alone in the old, dilapidated house on the hill, a house we could see when the canes were cut, a house that loomed gaunt and cockeyed against the brooding background of the two countable isolation" (Frank Collymore, Some People are Meant to Live Alone). The main character Bill decided to go up to Uncle Arthurs's house to find out why his mother uses to say he was so horrible to be with. That is why nobody ever wants to be around him and why he lives alone. Bill knocked on the door and Arthur invited him upstairs to talk. Arthur told Bill a story about a man that he once knew by the name of Jones. Jones was once married for a few years and hated every second of it. "Arthur, when the story begins, had been married four or five years and he was desperately unhappy. His wife w...
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Water

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  This story is very different from the other short stories that we have read. Rosena on the Mountain is a short story about a young Haitian boy who wants to join the sainthood. He grew up from nothing in the slums of his town. He feels that God has to lead him to become closer to him. "I felt destined to rise at two o'clock each morning of my life and to utter only three words a week" (Rosena on the Mountain, René Despestre). The boy went to the mountains to start his journey in sainthood. There he met a girl that helps with the sainthood that is called Rosena. She would help in the kitchen, making food, and gathering water.     Rosena has her eye on the boy and the boy starts to feel a certain way about Rosena. The boy knows that he cannot sin with Rosena because it goes against his beliefs. The temptation becomes too strong and Rosena and the boy sin together. The boy is in love but is distraught at the same time because he has gone against everything that he has learn...
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Family

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  The Inheritance of my Father: A Story for Listening is a story about a man's home country and a child's dream to visit where her father is from. The child dreamed about going to her father's homeland to see where he came from. It is important to know where you come from especially where your parents came from. It gives the individual a sense of belonging to a certain culture and background. The child's grandmother which was the mother of the child's father wanted her grandchild to visit so badly that she would call the home every day and tell her to come to visit. The grandmother was still in her homeland and she knew she didn't have much time left on the earth. So, she needed to see her grandchild before passing on. The grandmother had a large piece of property back where she lived. She would have given the property to her son when she passed on but since he moved away and disobeyed her, she decided to give it to her grandchild instead. "Everything that ...
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Hardships

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Passport to Paradise is a little different than some stories we have read this semester. The women in this story seem to be the one working all the time in the field and takes care of all eight of her children. "Their cane crop had all been harvested the day before, so that day she had begun to weed her vegetable garden. As she always did, she sang one of the old tunes which came from deep in her memory to keep time with her hoe as she dug up the weeds.  She loved her man, her healthy children, her clean house; she was blessed with the strength and courage to work" (Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Passport to Paradise). The woman in this story is the one who has to st ay strong. She is the one who is working, taking care of the children, and managing the house. Most of the other stories we have read have the women below the men. This story is an exception in that the woman is the main person in this story and everything revolves around her and her doings. Even when the husband doesn...
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Death

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  Journey to the Seed by Alejo Carpentier is a story about a man named Marcial. It starts at the end of his life while he is on his death bed. "Don Marcial, Marquis of Capellanías lay on his deathbed, his breast clad with metal, and with an escort of four candles with long beards of melted wax" (Alejo Carpentier, Journey to the Seed). The story travels backward from his deathbed to when he was younger and born. It was interesting to see a story written this way because it gave the reader a new and different perspective of your life. It discusses the parties and dances with the girls he had, and his relationship with his wife. It also talks about how he had to sell everything, and his social class drops as well. It was interesting to read what he did in the past after you already read about how he turned out. "The world of ideas was slowly becoming empty" (Alejo Carpentier, Journey to the Seed). The more that the story travels backward Marcial's knowledge slowly ...
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Sources

  Brown, Stewart, and John Wickham.  The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories . Oxford University Press, 2001.     Zahed, Dr. Hyder. “Water as a Symbol of Love.”   HuffPost , HuffPost, 21 Aug. 2014, www.huffpost.com/entry/water-as-a-symbol-of-love_b_5516722.       Breit, Carly. “The Surprising Benefits of Being an Introvert.”   Time , Time, 27 Aug. 2018, time.com/5373403/surprising-benefits-introvert/.   Watts, Richard. "contested Sources: Water as commodity/Sign in French caribbean Literature."  Atlantic Studies  4.1 (2007): 87-101. “Symbolic Meaning of Water and the Wisdom of Water on Whats-Your-Sign.”  Whats , 30 Sept. 2020, www.whats-your-sign.com/symbolism-of-water.html.  Foundation, We Are Water. “Water, Symbol and Metaphor.”  Smart Water Magazine , Smart Water Magazine, 29 Mar. 2019, smartwatermagazine.com/news/we-are-water-foundation/water-symbol-and-metaphor.  Gikandi, Simon.  Writing in limb...
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