Krik! Krak! - Between The Pool And The Gardenias

"Between the pool and the Gardenias" portrays the story of a poor woman that finds an abandoned baby on the street and decides to keep her. The story is set in Haiti, a poor country consumed by malnutrition, abandonment, and suffering. Edwidge Danticat uses the main character, a poor, lower class, black woman from Ville Rose, to make a political commentary on the situation in Haiti. The story suggests the desire of poor people to escape their harsh reality and become consumed in a world outside their own.

Danticat makes various social commentaries in "Between the Pool and the Gardenias." The story begins by describing a baby left abandoned in the middle of the street. It seems she has been left there for at least hours without anyone taking her into authority. The author explains, "In the city, I hear they throw out entire children. They throw them anywhere: on doorsteps, in garbage cans..". Danticat is trying to portray the lack of moral values brought about by the desperate need for survival. In a country consumed by poverty, people learn to tend for themselves and worry about self-survival. Mothers that can't afford to feed their children, throw them out.

The author also alludes to the ignorance by the middle class towards the lower class. They chose to turn away and criticize them. The author writes, "They didn't notice that I had come the day before with no child. Suddenly, I had one now, and nobody asked a thing". This again fits in with the idea that it is every man on his own. People were too consumed in their own daily struggles to worry, or even notice, any one else around them. The woman's masters do not notice the baby either, they feel superior to her and pay no attention to her other than to criticize her. The middle class in Haiti looked at the lower class as "voodoo" people and felt disconnected with them. Danticat is portraying the effects that this feeling of superiority had on Haitians.

The theme throughout the story is the desire to escape reality. The woman, running from a past of suffering, wants to live a better life and prosper. Yet, she is only able to disconnect from her past by creating her own reality. When the woman finds the baby, she acknowledges all the signs that the baby is dead but seems to create a separate reality. She becomes delusional and takes the baby in as if it was hers; feeding, bathing, and caring for it constantly. She even imagines that the house she is a mid in belongs to her, the baby, and the pool man. In the end she says "We made a pretty picture standing there. Rose, me, and him." The woman's delusional state is provoked by her inability to maintain a family. She desperately wanted a family of her own. The author constantly uses words like "my" and "mine" that show possession. The woman's way of coping with tremendous loss and suffering was creating an alternate world. Danticat adds the woman's escape from reality to portray the desperate desire of Haitians to prosper from a life of poverty.

Becoming delusional was the only way many people could cope with the horrors of the government.

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