The Farming Of Bones By Edwidge Danticat

The Farming of Bones Analysis Edwidge Danticat’s “The Farming of Bones,” is set in the heart of the Haitian Genocide, or Parsley Massacre, of the late 1930s. The tragedy was a direct result of tensions between the neighboring countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, notably under the rule of Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo. Amabelle, a Haitian woman in the Dominican Republic, is subjected to nationalistic and radicalized Dominican rule in tandem with Dominican disdain for the Haitian people. Thrown into the world of chaotic violence that is the Parsley Massacre, Amabelle loses her loved ones, friends, and hope at times. Danticat shows that the present is molded by the events and feelings of the past by using the event of the Haitian massacre

The Parsley Massacre was caused by a series of long-lasting tensions between the Haitian and Dominican people but was ultimately caused by Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo. Rising to power and establishing a dictatorship, Trujillo was met with a rapidly declining economy despite, or perhaps because of, the ever-growing reliance on the exploitation of the Haitian people. Seeing the uproar of World War II in Europe, Trujillo resonated with Hitler’s radical ideologies. Drawing very obvious parallels between his own situation and the situation in Germany, Trujillo even graciously accepted a publicly gifted copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Trujillo took Hitler’s racist and nationalistic principles and applied them in the Dominican Republic as an instrument of manipulating and turning a declining society further against the already oppressed Haitian people. The Parsley Massacre is a pronounced manifestation of the past’s ability to mold the future and change, or in this case end, countless people’s lives. Danticat uses Amabelle’s responses and allegorical journey through the events of the Parsley Massacre to show that while past occurrences will change the future inevitably, humans retain agency over how they choose to interpret and

He encourages her to instead focus on the future and to “believe in the present. That it is worth living for. That it is worth fighting for" (Danticat 134). In turn, Amabelle is exposed to a way of thinking where the actions that are taken in the present as a response to the stimuli of the past are indicative of our future. Yves offers an anti-fatalism argument in essence by claiming that destiny is malleable and non-deterministic as one has agency over their own outcome. Furthermore, Amabelle reflects on the legacy of slavery in the past and the way in which they were reacted to. She connected her situation “even as [a child]” and knew that “there was a link between the farm and the plantation, that the work [they] did, picking coffee and cotton, would someday be linked to [their] own freedom” (Danticat 55). Historically the resistance of the Haitian people to slavery is what led to their independence much akin to their current situation marginalized under Dominican oppressors. Agency was paramount then and continues to be so in the present situation. Amabelle’s understanding of the past demonstrates how the complex interplay between past and present is in fact only made possible by the actions of those in the present. No decision is devoid of outside influence no matter the case. Humans are creatures that respond