Answer 2 Discussion Questions

Grace
4.  Some people suggest they should follow the tradition, but some people suggest they should walk their own way.  Which side do you support?

I think that it is important to do both. I think that it is important to remember where you came from and never forget the traditions that your family taught you as a child and to spread them on to your children. But I also think that if you let your family's tradition consume your whole life, then you are limited in the things that you can achieve.  One of the biggest examples in the book where tradition is important is Caroline's wedding. Haitian tradition is very important to the mother. Her whole life is surrounded by the traditions that she has learned. The reason why she has conflict with Caroline is because she thinks that Caroline is to modern because she has grown up in America. Their mother continues to make bone soup and saves all sorts of things from Haiti that she had suck as the hanker chief that was given to her when her husband had asked her to marry him. She believes that Caroline should have a Haitian marriage because she wants to keep those traditions alive. " Ma wanted Eric to officially come and ask her permission to marry her daughter. She wanted him to bring his family to our house and have his father ask her blessing. She wanted Eric to kiss up to her, escort her around, buy her gifts, and shower her with compliments. Ma wanted a full-blown church wedding. She wanted Eric to be Haitian." This shows how difficult and stubborn Caroline's mother was about the traditions that she upholds. Caroline is very modern and she just wants her mother to stop bothering her with the Haitian traditions. She does not understand, but Grace does understand because she was born in Haiti and she has lived in the US. She is trying to figure out her life. Caroline shows that she is modern because she insults the bone soup that her mother makes all the time. She says that she is going to burn her face in it to prove to her mother that there is no magic in the soup. There is plenty on conflicts between Caroline and her mother about if she should carry on the traditions of Haiti or go their own way in life.


2. Why does the author name some of the characters and unnamed some of the characters?

I think the author is trying to show that there are people in the world that we do not know about that are living in poverty or they are dying because of their government or their living situation. We do not know their names because we have never tried to know them. I think the author is trying to say that people who are privileged should be aware of what is happening in other places and should try to help the people who are constantly struggling. In Children of the Sea we do not know the names of the male or female narrators. They were separated because the male was apart of a group against the government and he has to leave on a boat to America. On the boat, the male narrator meets an old man. The boy asks his name. "'It is Justin Moise Andre Nozius Joseph Frank Osnac Maximilien." His name is so long that we as the reader do not even care about it. I think that the male narrator does not care about it either because he is on a boat to the US that might sink, and he has left his girlfriend who he loves, in Haiti. The point is that without a name, we do not have any kind of connection to people who die everyday.