How Does Edwidge Danticat Present The Theme Of Freedom

The Farming of Bones, a novel by Edwidge Danticat, first takes place in the Dominican Republic, 1937. A young Haitian woman, Amabelle Desir, demonstrates how difficult it is to cooperate with the Haitians and Dominicans. Danticat utilizes the recurring theme of ironic freedom being compared to authentic freedom, while expressing and explaining these themes throughout the novel in numerous ways to show the reader the differences of the pigeons and hummingbirds being more dominant than the one other. Edwidge Danticat utilizes the motif of birds to demonstrate a theme of ironic freedom. The morning after Joel, a worker on the cane plantation, was killed by Papi’s automobile, “Everyone was unusually quiet, even in their whisperings. Instead

Papi, a military war veteran, talks to Amabelle about how he feels “like a bird who’s flown over two mountains without looking at the valley in the center. I don’t know what I will or won’t retain in a few more years. Even now there are many things that took place yesterday I don’t remember” (76). After joining the army, Papi starts to realize how his emotions dealing with hope and happiness are at stake. Looking back at witnessing bloodshed, he starts to perceive memories as a loss of freedom. The diction of “like a bird who’s flown over two mountains without looking at the valley in the center” signifies a sense of being lost. Moreover, the “two mountains” distinguish the Dominicans, a pigeon who is small and fragile, being compared to the Haitians, that is stronger and sizeable being separated due to hate and racism. Amabelle is alone lying bare in her room, “Listening for music in the trees, the flame tree pods flapping against each other as the hummingbirds squawk back in fear. They know the sound of flame tree pods in motion, the hummingbirds do, but it is a sound that shifts all the time, becoming mutted or sharp with the strength of the wind” (94). The tone in this passage is frightful and mocking. “Flame tree pods flapping against each other as the hummingbirds squawk back in fear” is significant because the flame tree pods demonstrate how something so small can fight back against something so big, resulting in dominance being broken due to courage and