Theme

Danticat shows many themes throughout the story. One theme that especially occurs a lot is false hope. No matter what happens or what people believe in the story nothing will ever work in their favor. Their dreams will always be shut down and will end in misery. Yet, hope prevails.

In the first story you can expect a happy ending in the beginning, but as the story goes on the inevitable fate begins to unravel. When a woman is raped she thinks she will have the baby and everything will be all right. Except she has the baby and it dies. Even after it dies she still holds onto it tightly not letting it go. It is almost is she expects some miracle to bring the baby back to life. Except no miracle was going to happen and the mother herself had a slim chance of surviving. 

The boat was sinking. Their time was limited. All around them, boats are sinking. They need to throw their stuff off the boat to stop it from sinking. They believe they'll survive it, and although they might have the author implies they didn't. There hope that the could have survived was in vain. All the help they received from loved ones to escape was hopeless.

Even the people at home think they have a chance. They paid off the guards so they could survive. Except that didn't set them free. They are likely to be captured and killed trying to escape. Essentially, everyone trying to escape ended up dead. The people in this story are negligent to reality, and the reality is there is not hope because everyone trying to escape will die.

This theme of false hope is carried on the next story. The people in the prison are as well as dead. Yet, they value things such as sunlight and people still visit them. When the woman goes to see her mother she finds out that her mother was killed. She was sent to jail for believing a prohibited religion. However, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. The daughter vowed at the end to follow her mother's footsteps. Surely fate will catch up to her and she will end up in the ground with her mother. 

Additionally, in the next story, there is a boy who wants to recite his lines to the play. You may be asking yourself, What could possibly go wrong now?  It's just a boy in a play." I' afraid the boy is not the only character. There is also a dad, who wants to sign his son up for work to secure him a job, even though the son could make more money with an education. Yet, the mother disagreed, ruining the father's hopes. Consequently, the father steals a hot air balloon. He is finally able to fly and drift off in the clouds. There is a moment of hope as if the man had done a great thing by stealing this balloon. Except the man did not think too far ahead. As he was lifted into the air he probably realized that his plan was horribly flawed. When he landed they would kill him. So he took a lower and possibly less painful route. He jumped falling to the ground, ending his life. All hope was lost.