Blog post #6 Themes

One recurring theme that I noticed was the theme of Death. I noticed that the theme was used as a way of escape for all three stories. The little girl's boyfriend in the first story went on a boat to run away from the soldiers in Haiti. While on the boat, this young girl named Celianne who happened to be pregnant, gave birth to her first born child at the age of 15 after being raped repeatedly. Sadly, her baby was born dead and never made it, yet Celianne kept the baby close to her for days at a time. People kept telling her to throw her baby out to sea because the ship was not holding and they needed to get rid of any unnecessary weight. At first Celianne refused, but as the days went on she decided it was time and threw her baby overboard. In a desperate attempt to escape what she has gone through, she jumped in after her baby and drown. In the second story, Lili’s mother died in prison after being falsely accused of having wings made of fire. The other ladies in jail said her mother was beaten to death by the police and that's how she died. In my opinion, her mother must have done something bad for the police to just start beating her. I believe her mother wanted to die because she wanted to be free. She wanted to escape and “fly away.” Last but not least, the third story was all about a father, mother and their little son. The father, who was known as Guy, jumped out of a hot air balloon after facing the harsh reality of life. Guy constantly struggled to be a good father and a supporting husband. He was good at it, but he couldn't seem to handle being both a good father and supporting husband at the same time. The two roles seemed to clash with one another and he felt like he was failing his family. He was without a job, and therefore could not support his family or be there for his son. He did not think his son would make it far by just studying all the time. He wanted his son to start working so in the future his son would not have the same problems. but , as the days went on and Guy still could not find a job, the stress, anxiety and  anger took over him. So he stole a hot air balloon, and jumped out of it to escape the realities of life. He wanted to escape reality and live in his own world where everything would be alright.  All of these themes tie together, but the main theme I had in my mind was death. As sad as it is, sometimes people are in such desperate situation they feel like they have no choice but to end it all. I feel as of everyone of them felt like they were doing a good thing. Each one of these stories break my heart, because someone in each family felt the only way they would be able to escape everything, was to die. Other recurring themes were escape, freedom, happiness and desperation.