Monday, May 11, 2009
Are we in the right?
In Breath, Eyes, Memory, the biggest conflict stated is that of sexual. In Francis’s essay, she states “US state officials often justified this behavior by designating these servicemen as drunk or mentally unbalanced as a result of their tenure in the tropics. They therefore could not be held responsible for their actions (164).” The fact that these men who were sent to help a country in need committed these acts makes this extremely outrageous. The soldiers were sent to Haiti to help modernize the country, not to make to put the people, especially the woman, who bring the population ahead In a position where they feel dehumanized. The US soldiers trained Haitian Militai, such as the macoutes, it is then no surprise that they would follow each step the Americans soldiers took, because they were the epitome of how these soldiers were supposed to act. So if the US soldiers were raping woman left and right, the new soldiers were going to do just that, to prove their strength. These men have no realization as to what effect they have upon the woman they have treated so atrociously. The perfect example of this is Martine. She is unable to live her life because of the way she has been treated. She in fact kills herself because she cant live with the fact that she was raped. After reading this essay, i am unsure as to whether the idea of helping another country is even worth, if we cause the peopleliving there so much pain. Are the good aspects we bring forth enough to forget the pain we bring?
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The politics of women's bodies placed in the context of Danticat's novel raises an interesting question about whether or not military intervention is truly helpful. According to Francis' essay, America's intervention on Haiti proved to be unthinkable; especially for the women. Their bodies became battlefields and their lives fragmented and strategically made invisible. Moreover, instead of the government viewing the systematic rape of women as a crime, they simply viewed it as a type of violence "attributed to class"(78). The most intriguing point Francis makes in her essay is her idea about how violence taken out upon the bodies of women functions by means of "invisibility". If something is unnoticed or silenced, nothing can be done about it. Hence, when Duvalier's government "instated tonton macoutes", which means "bogeymen", in order to maintain control over the society, it was as if this militia didn't exist--as if they were figments of society's imagination. The rapes continued by means of this "concealment". Eventually, rape became part of Haitian women's "social history"(79).
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