Frederick Douglass once said “The thing worse than rebellion is the thing that causes rebellion”. Change, how important is it? Important enough to give up your life? Your family? Everything? When the answer is yes, we rebel. We risk our lives, our families, and everything. In the novel The Kingdom of This World, the Haitian people are willing to risk everything to gain equal treatment; the torment and destruction they cause is only justified by the terror of their lives as they are. In the film Moolaade, we see the suffering of the Senegalese women; they hold strong to their traditions until the terror of continuing to do so is greater than the risk of their lives and all their status. Both The Kingdom of This World and Moolaade show that when people are brought together by one individual, oppose a current regime, and are willing to risk everything for change, they rebel.
Carpentier uses conch shells to symbolize the growth of the rebellion in The Kingdom of This World. At first, only
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In Moolaade, Colle Ardo, like Macandal, is the first to speak out against the system of rule. Having already refused to have her own daughter “purified”, Colle doesn’t hesitate to protect the girls who look to her for refuge from such a fate. To assure the girls safety, Colle uses the power of the Moolaade, a magical protection spell that few have the ability to cast, to scare the rest of the town from undermining her power. Similarly, Macandal is seen to have knowledge that others see as otherworldly: the knowledge of natural medicine. Both use their power to start their uprising: Colle with her spell of protection and Macandal with his herbal concoction of destruction. Their ability to revolt, to be the needed first one to speak out, comes from this distinct knowledge they have; leaders of rebellions must be well informed in order to properly assess the impending consequences of their