Saturday, February 12, 2011

Between the Pool and the Gardenias

This story is about a Haitian woman having had more than her fair share of tragedy and her struggle to cope.  Throughout her life she has been trying to become a mother to no avail. Every time she was pregnant she would have a miscarriage. It gets to the point where even her husband questions whether or not she is killing her children before they are born on purpose.
                She stumbles upon an infant which had been discarded in the street and takes it as her own. From here on her descent into madness is in full swing. The child she took was actually deceased and she begins to treat it as if it were alive and her own in a truly bizarre attempt at finally achieving motherhood.
                “I swayed her in my arms like she was and had always been mine”. Here Marie can be seen diving head first into her delusion leaving reality for a twisted version of her perfect family. The tragedy of losing her own children led her to delusion. The corpse she now gently swayed in her arms was symbolic of how close she had always been to being a mother yet reaffirming her reality. Marie has reached the breaking point and will no longer wait for her dreams to come to fruition, instead she decides to act.
 I see similarities between Marie, the woman in this story, and Guy from, “A Wall of Fire Rises”. Both characters could never realize their dreams whether they be motherhood or flying a hot air balloon, so they decide to take drastic measures so that they may live the dream if only for a moment.
Eventually Marie is forced to leave her dream when the process of decay begins to take away the baby Rose from her. Once again Marie is forced to put another one of her children into the earth, only this time society will not take her as a grieving parent, but rather a criminal.

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