Ties Between Womanhood and Motherhood Anonymous 10th Grade

In Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat expands on the difficult role women must fulfill in a corrupted Haitian society. She portrays some of these requirements through the various transformations in the story, “The Missing Peace”. With this important text, Danticat indicates that maturity and sexuality are not identical, and that personal development is bound up with learning to deal with loss and learning to put society, and one's own place in it, in perspective.

Emilie comes as a tourist to Ville Rose in search for her lost mother. Her search mainly acts, however, to confirm her mother’s death, take a step into reality, and begin the process of grieving. She feels disconnected from her mother and doesn’t want her to go as she tells Lamort, “‘I see my mother sinking into a river, and she keeps calling my name”’ (116). Emilie can’t save her mother even though she’s calling Emilie for help, and Emilie feels useless. In an attempt to reach her mother and try to save her, Emilie goes to the graveyard. Although she already knows the outcome, she can’t fully accept it. That night, after painfully witnessing soldiers pulling a dead man on the ground, she knows that she can’t physically reach her mother. Instead, Emilie works on her mother’s...