The Farming Of Bones

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 Professor Hitchcock                                                                               Elmer Ortiz

 Ethnic Literature                                                                                                Anastasiya Gorak

                                                                                                                             Krystal Yang

             Mario Zevallos

                                                                                                                             Karen Ross

                                           The Farming Of Bones

      In literature, innovation is key to making a novel stand out. Novelists can gain high honor and esteem if they can piece their novel in a unique way. Any novel can have themes, symbolism and metaphors but it is those novels that can use these devices in an indistinguishable way that makes them stand out. In the novel The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat, Danticat uses the twin themes of life and death to piece the story together in an innovative way in that she uses history as a means of keeping the memory and dreams of her deceased family members and her fellow Haitians alive in the reader’s memory. History can only survive through the retelling and recording of people, places and events. As the main character, Amabelle, faces difficult situations, it is the desire to keep their significance and memory in her mind that pushes her to endure.

      In examining the novel, Amabelle is the embodiment of Danticat’s vision to keep the seemingly unimportant people who pass away alive in our memory. Amabelle is a character that rises against the notion of one man’s viewpoint about famous and unfamous people toward the end of the book: “Famous people never truly die...It is only those nameless and faceless who vanish like smoke into the early morning air” ( Danticat 280).  Amabelle challenges that notion to prove that anyone’s life can be preserved even through death. Throughout the novel, there are moments where the reader gets a deeper understanding of those whom have passed away through Amabelle’s descriptions and memories.

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    Danticat showcases many characters that seem unimportant but are deeply significant in keeping Haitan history alive after death. One such character is Joel. Joel was a sugarcane worker that worked alongside Amabelle’s lover Sebastien. His death was caused by Senor Pico, a famous and wealthy Dominican in the Dominican Republic. Joel’s death had occurred around the time Senor Pico’s son, Rafael, had passed. But with these two deaths, there are sharp contrasts. Senor Pico and his family have a wake, a funeral, elaborately made casket and the memory of his son imprinted in the minds of the Dominican ...

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