Friday, September 17, 2010
"Caroline's Wedding" Blog
"Caroline's Wedding" is a story filled with symbols. Find one person, place, thing or event in this story that, in your opinion, is a significant symbol. What is it? What does it represent? Include at least one direct quote from the story related to the symbol you've chosen. How does the quote support your thinking about this symbol?
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One symbol in Caroline’s Wedding is Grace’s dream about her father and sister being together and not including her in the group. This event tells how much Grace would like to be with her father and how much she doesn’t want to be discluded from a group of family members that she misses and loves. I think of this quote as a symbol because it symbolizes Graces love for her father and her hope not to be discluded from the family
One symbol in “Caroline’s Wedding” is Grace’s passport, which she receives at the end of the book. I think the passport symbolizes reward because everything the Azile family went through, everything they had to compromise and everything they suffered, they endured because they needed to get to America. They struggled through it all so that they could become American citizens. Mr. Azile’s love for his wife faded as he left the family for America. Granted, he went to America to provide for his family and support them but along they way he lost his love. For America he had to leave them and marry someone else.
Mrs. Azile was heartbroken because her husband lost his love for her while she did not lose her love for him. While he was in America trying to send for them, she was at home missing him. It ruined their marriage and Mrs. Azile received heartache.
Caroline also had to compromise for America. She was born without her left fore arm because of a sweatshop immigration raid which led to her mother’s arrest which led to drugs messing up Caroline’s birth. Mrs. Azile had worked so hard for America, only to be locked up, while pregnant.
So when Grace finally receives her passport it is a little like compensation for everything her family had to give up, I think after all the hardship the passport symbolizes reward.
Hi, its Stef. I think that a symbol in the story is when Grace has a dream about sitting at a campfire with her dad, because it symbolizes how close they were, and how much they love each other, even if one is dead, they still love each other. I also think that there are many things in the dream that represent different things, like the game that the dad tries to play, I think that represents her dad asking many question so he knows how her life is going. Another dream that I think symbolizes something is the one where she is at a party with her dad, and she keeps trying to run to him, but no matter how hard she tries, she can never get to him. I think that these dreams kind of connect, because when the dad leaves the party to hang out with Caroline and leaves Grace behind, he comes to her and they sit by a campfire, as though that is his way of saying sorry. I also think that the mask that falls off of Graces dad represents how much he misses them, and how sad he was when he found out he was dead.
Grace and Caroline's late father plays a big role in "Caroline's Wedding". His influence on his family is sometimes attributed to him indirectly, such as through his riddles and jokes. In the end, his games are used to maintain a sense of normality between the remaining members after Caroline has left for her honeymoon. " 'Why is it that when you lose something, it is always in the last place you look for it?' She asked finally. Because of course, once you remember, you always stop looking."
A symbol in Caroline's Wedding is on page 159 in the beginning of the book, Grace is introducting her mothers soup. Her mother describes it as being able to, "cure all kinds of ills. " When you think about this soup and the relationship to "Ma," you realize that this soup is something more than wishful thinking. Ma's soup is something for Ma to belive in. Ma has had a pretty hard life so this soup is like Santa Claus to her, sometimes when your life gets to a tough spot, a belive is something that can lift your spirit. Ma's soup is a belive for her that changed her way of thinking.
Caroline's Wedding has alot of possible symbols within the story, but the one that really stands out to me is the bone soup that Ma always made for her daughters. However, this soup was not there simply just to feed them, but made in an effort to separate Caroline from Eric, her fiance'. I feel like Ma is stuck in the past and wants things to go back to the way things were when their father was still alive. She really is opposed to her kids moving on especially Caroline who is marrying an American and not a Haitian. Ma hoped that her bone soup would perform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric. "If she keeps making this soup," Caroline whispered, "I will dip my head into the pot and scald myself blind. That will show her that there is no magic in it." I think Caroline was obliviouse to what the soup actually meant to her mother-that it was a way for her to stick to her own traditions and to hopefully keep her children from leaving her. However, I do think Caroline's sister had a special relationship with their mother and was able to tell what she was thinking. "She talks bad about the soup but she drinks it."
"She is not a child Ma."
"She doesn't have to drink it."
"She wants to make you happy in any small way she can."
I think Caroline DID know that her mother wasn't too fond of her and Eric being together, and she does try to make her happy. However, she has to marry Eric no matter how badly her mother will hate her for it, and her sister knows that. The soup is just an effort to stick to their old traditions and to keep the new ones out.
I think one symbol in the story is the black panties Grace and Caroline wore after after her fathers death. Their mother had forced them to wear red panties, "In Ma's family, the women often wore blood red panties so that their dead husbands would not come back and lie down next to them." (P.170), but neither Grace nor Caroline had worn the red panties for a single day. Instead they wore black panties so their father WOULD come and visit them. I think this is a symbol because in represents how much both the girls missed their father. They went against what their mother had said because they did not want to keep their father away, instead they wanted to keep him close.
-Camrin
One symbol in the story is how Ma hates how her children don't follow their Haitian culture without force. Since they grew up in America, they never learned life in Haiti, but Ma just wishes that they could be more Haitian. This is also explained when Ma wants Caroline to marry a Haitian, not an American. It's almost as if to her, being American is a bad thing. "You think you are so American," Ma said to Caroline. "You don't know what's good for you. You have no taste buds. Double tragedy."
I think Ma wants her children to grow up Haitian, not realizing that she can't, as they were born and raised in a place far from Haiti. This symbolizes the fact that she wants to keep her culture in the family, and it also relates to Double Face: Lindo's daughter fears becoming American and losing her own culture as Ma fears for her children.
I'm Cara btw I don't know what's going on with my accounts. Sorry. I'm trying to fix the problem...
I think the main symbol in “Caroline’s Wedding” is the dreams the girls have about their fathers. The dreams represent a longing for their father and the simplicity of their childhood. Now that they are older they have weddings, jobs, passports, and mothers to worry about, when they were younger they had their mother and their father to protect and take care of them. Grace longs for her father to come and make everything right in their family. Grace does not like the tensions and secrets that are tearing them apart. Caroline wishes her father could be alive to attend and bless her wedding. Since their father’s death the girls have gone against their mother’s wishes and worn black underwear because they long for their father to communicate and guide them through their challenging adult lives in any way possible.
One of the more significant symbols in “Caroline Wedding” is Caroline’s missing arm which is in support of the main theme of “losing something that is dear to you.” The main conflict in the story is the self-induced fear that both Grace and her family share. Since they were born with so little material wealth they instead turned inward and “clung”(depended) to each other for support. But when Grace’s father died it created a gap in this tight-knit relationship, which soon became even more stressed when Caroline decides to get married. The seed of fear soon begins to propagate among the family and manifest itself into individual grievances.Caroline now fears that she will soon lose her sister along with her father. And as Sophie wrote her mother, fears of possible infidelity from Eric. Because of this conflict among the family it cannot be purely coincidental that Caroline lacks an arm. The arm represents a unfulfilled dream of Caroline which she achieved by marrying Eric (prosthetic limb). Most likely Caroline longed for some form of empathy, which she sought out in the form of Eric.
I agree with Sophie, that bone soup shows it's significance quite a lot in this story. To Grace's mother, bone soup is not only something that makes her feel strong, but it also is also something in her life that remains constant. The soup represents hope, as her mother says it could "cure all kinds of ills. She even hoped that it would preform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric, her bahamian fiancé. Since Caroline had announced that she was engaged, we'd had bone soup with our supper every single night." The hope that bone soup gives Grace's Mother is hope for change, and a connection to tradition. Though america seems like a place of opportunity and wellness for Grace, to her mother, it is all change. Bone soup is the way she handles this change because it not only gives her hope that things will go back to her old Haitian ways, but it is also something in her life that is constant, and is a recipe that always stays the same.
In "Caroline's Wedding," there are many symbols but I think a really big symbol is the bone soup. Bone soup represents the old and good times that the mom, Caroline and grace had together. Caroline doesn’t really like the soup or living in the past (past being the bone soup). Just like Sophie I think that the mother just wants the old Caroline back, not the one that is going to get married to Eric and the girl who wants to be more American. Caroline knows that her mother doesn’t really like the idea of marrying Eric but since she thinks she is an adult and can handle life on her and take care of herself, she choose to marry him.
The soup also represents their mom. She cooks that soup all the time for her daughters as says that it doesn’t bother her eating it all the time. Ma knows that making the bone soup for her kids makes her feel happy in a way because she is showing her love and care into it. Ma thinks that her soup is magical, meaning it can cure you when sick. She also thought that it could tear apart Caroline from Eric. Caroline knows well enough that the soup is definitely not magical. "If she keeps making this soup," Caroline whispered, "I will dip my head into the pot and scald myself blind. That will show her that there is no magic in it." Caroline is saying that even though her mother thinks that the bone soup is somewhat magical, it isn’t to Caroline. I think Caroline wouldn’t actually do what she said in the quote because it’s dangerous but she is trying to prove her point that the soup isn’t magical at all.
a symbol in Carolines wedding is mas soup. i think the soup is more then just something healthy to eat or a cure when your ill.i think the soup is some kind of memory.it may be a soup that ma served to her husbend when he was alive. maybe the soup is some kind of way to keep him alive. i dont think there is a quote to support my opion. i thnk you have to read between the lines to think of this.
I agree totally with Stef's response, and i just want to "add-on" to it. I think the dreams are a big symbol, as they always relate to what was happening in real life, and tells about how Grace would reflect about it. Always, in the dreams, the dad is like a pinnacle of wisdom, where he would have all the the right answers, the right solutions, the truth. He is so perfect, so desirable, only the painful truth is that no one could reach it. Grace almost would have at times, but the smallest obstacles would block her goal. Like in the party dream, Grace could see him, could almost walk to him, but he would never know that she was there.
The mass that Grace and her mother went to was a really grievous one, as it recalled all the memories of the people who sacrificed themselves for the sake of the "better good". In Grace's dream that night, it made her put a connection between her father and the mass. The masks were like the graves, and under them were all the people who sacrificed themselves. The dad, when he removed his mask and greeted Grace in the different ways, was like telling her that he loved it more that Caroline could be born in America, his family could flourish in the promised land, and that someone would love Caroline so dearly and marry her. Unable to run to her dad, it would dawn on her that he was not able to join them; he could only rejoice at what he contributed for his family. Only when "he dropped his mask on the ground, and like smoke in a windy day, he disappeared" and all was left was the "expression on the mask (which) was like a frozen scream", she would know that her dad was distraught to not be with them, and the only way to put him with them was to "fuse" his mask with her heart, calling out to him her love.
When her dad stood with Caroline, it was symbolizing that he was on Caroline's side; he supported the marriage.
As Grace's role in the story, being sort of in the "middle", the dreams would console her, and tell her the right. Only in this way she could fully understand her family.
September 27, 2010
When Caroline and Grace dream about their father it symbolizes their relationship and how close they are to him, even after his death. I thought that Caroline and Grace’s dream stood out the most because they both had the same dream. They dreamt about themselves trying to reach their father but they never succeeded. Caroline and grace did not tell their mother about the dream that they knew what she would say: “She would guess that we had not been wearing our red panties and would warn us that the day we caught up to Papa in our dream would be the day that we both would die.” P.170-171. Their mother believes that wearing red panties keeps her dead husband’s spirit away but Caroline and Grace never wore them. “We had always worn our black panties instead, to tell him that that he would be welcome to visit us. I think this symbolizes why Grace and Caroline dream about him.
Helena
I think one of the important symbols was when Caroline and Eric were getting married, and Grace was saying how Caroline was suddenly becoming a different person. "Caroline's face, as I had known it, slowly began to fade, piece by piece, before my eyes. Another woman, someone who was no longer my little sister." (205) I think this event represents the meaning of change, and how Caroline is becoming a different person. Another quote was when Grace was explaining what she felt when Caroline was getting married. "I couldn't help but feel as though she was divorcing us, trading in her old allegiances for a new one." This quote represents the feeling of loss and betrayal, because Grace is talking about how it was as if Caroline was leaving them for someone else. How Caroline was creating her new life where Grace and Ma would not be included. I think that both of these events/quotes are a symbol of change and loss, because both Caroline and her family are changing with the fact that Caroline is leaving them, and they have to adjust to that. Also, how they are losing a small part of Caroline, but not all of her. I really like both of these symbols because I like the idea of change they talk about, because everyone goes through change.
An important part of Caroline’s Wedding is that Ma wants to live through Caroline. Ma wants her husband back so she wants Caroline to marry someone like him. Ma’s husband goes to the U.S. to become a citizen so he can bring Ma and Grace to the U.S. Somewhere along his journey however he stopped loving Ma. Ma said the way he wrote to her, she knew he had lost his love for her. Caroline is about to get married to a man named Erik. Ma wants Erik to be Haitian and to be like Caroline’s father. Ma doesn’t want Caroline to choose a husband who will lose his love for her. Ma though still misses her husband’s love from Haiti and presence before he died.
Ma’s experience with her husband has changed her perspective on people and has turned her hard. “The heart is like a stone,” she said. “We never know what is in the middle.” Ma is saying in this statement that she had no idea that her husband would lose his love for her and that if she had known this, she might have prevented her husband from leaving.
Even though Grace is considered the “misery baby” because she was born in Haiti when her parents were struggling with money, Grace’s parents loved her and each other when they were in Haiti. The parent’s struggle in Haiti ended as they moved to the United States, but a new struggle started. The struggle in the United States was over love. Caroline was born in the United States. She is missing a forearm. Caroline’s missing arm represent the missing love between the couple.
The dreams Grace and her sister keep on having are more than a figment of their imagination. Their father is trying to speak to them in their dreams. In the dream that Grace saw her father at the ball had many meanings. “I felt as though there was something he wanted to tell me. Suddenly, he dropped his mask on the ground, and like smoke on a windy day, he disappeared. My feet were now able to move. I walked over to where he had been standing and picked up the mask. The expression on the mask was like a frozen scream.” The mask represented the mysteries her father kept secret. Are these dreams reality altered making it easier to understand the mysteries left behind? Does Grace feel that her father had something to tell her that haunts him, which the scream on the mouth represents, but he died before he could tell her? There are questions that keep on popping up.
A big symbol in Caroline's Wedding is the Bone Soup. It's the mom's favorite recipe, she believe it can cure everything from emotional to physical illnesses. But the Mom uses it most to try and cure what she believes to be Caroline's mental illness, marrying a non Haitian man. This is a big symbol because it clearly presents this resentment toward American culture. This belief of wanting things to remain constant. one important quote about soup is when the main character Grace says, " Ma believed her soup can cure all types of ills. she even hoped it would preform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric, her... fiance.´" Bone Soup is a major theme.
I think that there are so many different symbols in this short story and that they're all so amazing and unique. But what stands out to me the most are the red roses given to the mother by Caroline at the very end of the story. The roses represent a variety of things and have strong meaning and memories in them. I think that the roses are significant because they show how Caroline is moving on to a more American life with a husband who isn't Haitian but at the same time wants to keep a piece of her mom and where they come from. The red roses also represent a sorrowful recognition from the mother that her daughter is moving on with her life. The roses also seem to bring back heavy memories of everything the mother has gone through in order for Caroline to reach where she is; such as the fake marriage the father goes through. The roses are also significant because they represent the love she remembers with her husband and how she sees something similar going through Caroline.
The symbol that I have chosen is the proposal letter that Caroline’s father wrote when he proposed to her mother. The fact that she kept it wrapped as it was originally in the pink and green handkerchief for all those years implies its importance. One can imagine that such a letter would hold many personal memories; so keeping it would keep those memories alive. But in the story, the letter seems to have much more importance than just as a simple memento because it indicates the mother’s ideal for how a groom should propose to the bride. In a way, the letter in the story becomes a symbol of what the mother wants for her daughter and does not get. I believe this is the reason why at the end of the story, when the mother shows the letter to Grace, she asks her to burn it after she dies; as if she feels that with her death, a whole world with die with her.
In the story, the handkerchief containing the letter is already a symbolic object as it is made evident when the mother says that the handkerchief is “Pink because it is the color of romance and green for hope that it might work.” Throughout the story, we hear “Ma” complain about her daughters having lost their “Haitianness” despite their efforts. I believe that the ending of the story with the game of questions has a lot to do with the idea of continuity and change between mother and daughter. I agree with Becca in that the Caroline’s wedding brings out a feeling of estrangement in both “Ma” and Grace and that in marrying Caroline is becoming a new person. When the mother asks Grace to destroy the letter, Grace responded, “I can’t promise you that.” A little bit later her mother replies, “The past, it fades a person. And yes. Today, it was a nice wedding.” This quote shows that the letter is also a representation of the fading away of the old world; the world she knew.
I Agree with Camrin, That One of the symbols in Caroline's Wedding is the black panties. The black panties represent Grace & Caroline's connection with their father after he died, 'women often wore blood red panties so that their dead husbands would not come back and lie down next to them. ' Wearing black panties when they were told to where red ones shows how the girls still want to have any last connections with their father that they can.
Not only does wearing black panties represent the connection with their deceased father, it also represents the reoccurring theme of defying the cultures normal pattern. Caroline marrying a man who is not Haitian, also represents defying the cultural norm.
I believe that the father is a very important symbol in Caroline’s Wedding because not only is he a figure that represents Caroline’s culture but he also represents how that culture is slipping away as time passes yet will always be there. Every time Caroline or her sister, Grace, has a dream about their deceased father they are forced to remember who they are and what they have come from.
After their childhoods, these dreams started to go away. But once again, these dreams returned when Caroline announced she is getting married. It is as if Caroline was asking for her father’s permission to marry Eric. Once Caroline was married, Grace began to see her father again in her dreams/ a finally confrontation. “He said, ‘We are playing a game, you must answer me.’ I said, ‘ I don’t know the answers.’ ‘When you become mothers, how will you name your sons?’ ‘We’ll name them all after you,’ I said. ‘You have forgotten how to play this game,’ he said.” In this final encounter with her father, she realized that yes she had strayed from her traditional culture and that they were now living a new life in America. Yet, no matter what her father would always be with her. She realized that no matter what you cannot / should not completely abandon your original culture. She realized that your culture will always be alive in your ancestors.
Like Sophie, I think that the bone soup is an important symbol in Caroline’s Wedding. It is a symbol of tradition, family, culture, and a hint of superstition. “Ma” believes that bone soup can heal anything. She almost forces this belief at both Caroline and Grace everyday. It seems as if Caroline and Grace’s adulthood is unaware to “Ma”. She treats her daughters as if they were adolescents. Frankly, “Ma” is very conservative and old-fashioned. It may be strange for us Americans, but in her defense she was raised in a much more structured and conservative country. “Men cooking?” In certain countries like Haiti, there is a respect between children and parents that Americans don’t have, “Ma” points out. Even other Haitian women think in the same manner; they think that America turns young people into rebels. “Behind us, a group of women was carrying on a conversation, criticizing a neighbor’s wife who, upon leaving Haiti, had turned from a sweet Haitian wife into a self-willed tyrant.”
So in general I think the bone soup represents all of “Ma’s” traditions, and conservativness, and her sense of loyalty to her country.
-Kai Marcel
"Later that night, Ma called me into her bedroom after she thought Caroline had gone to sleep. The room was still decorated just the way it had been when Papa was still alive. There was a large bed, almost four feet tall, facing an old reddish brown dresser where we could see our reflections in a mirror as we talked. Ma's bedroom closet was spilling over with old suit-cases, some of which she had brought with her when she left Haiti almost twenty-five years ago."
Ma is among one of the key characterts in this short story, In this qoute, you can see that she is very proud of her Haitian Nationality, and she also misses her husband.
In "Caroline's Wedding", we see a mother who thinks that she is doing the best for her daughter by telling her to marry a Haitian man, but instead, is perhaps restricting Caroline. In this scene, we see a more calmed version of Ma, instead of the one that was yelling at Caroline in the beginning of the story. Perhaps this is becasue her room is like a place of cultural rememberance, meaning that Ma's room can also be a symbolic item in "Caroline's Wedding".
hey tom its brad. im using my aim user so i have a different name just so you know.
one symbol in "Caroline's Wedding" is when Grace had a dream about her dad at a party at someones house. Grace was outside the house by the window where she can see her father. She tries to get her father's attention but he didn't notice. Then the father went up stairs and when he came back down, he was followed by two people with their heads covered with a cloth. Then the father looked right at Grace and the people following him un-masked them selves. One of them was Caroline and the other one was her mother. I think this symbolizes how Grace wishes that her father was still alive so she could have her whole family together.
I think the red and black panties are an important symbol in this story. In the story, wearing red panties represent protection for Grace and Caroline. It's protection from they're father and any other men who might desire them to stay away because the color red represents blood, and something terrified the non-living. Caroline and her sister are forced to wear these red panties for 18 months. However, in the story, Grace and Caroline are talking and we as readers find out that they never have worn the red panties. Instead they've been wearing black panties this whole time. Black panties represent welcoming. They wore them to communicate with they're father and tell him that he's always welcome to come back; Caroline continued to wear her black panties because she wants her father to help her with decision making. "That he approved of her: of her life, of her choices, of her husband."
I think one of the biggest symbols in the book is bone soup. I think the bone soup is a way Caroline’s mother finds her courage to be strong and keep going. That is why she keeps making it every night for dinner. The soup is her way of dealing with Caroline’s wedding and the other difficult things in her life. “Ma believed that her bone soup could cure all kinds of ills. She even hoped it would perform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric, her Bahamian fiance. Since Caroline had announced that she was engaged , we’d had bone soup with our supper every single night.” Another example is when Caroline’s sister mentions Mrs.Ruiz’s son to Mrs.Ruiz and she is really offended, Caroline’s mother tells her she will make bone soup next time she visits. This suggests bone soup will help Mrs.Ruiz get over her sons death. To Caroline’s mother bone soup can make anything better.
I think a symbol in Caroline’s Wedding is becoming a citizen and the passport that grace gets in the end of the story. I think it is a symbol of the family moving on and becoming a part of something. When grace first became a citizen she was hesitant to go get her passport. “’The passport, weren’t you going to bring it to the post office to get a passport right away?’ she asked in Creole. ‘But I want you to see it, Ma’” In this quote grace does not really want to go get the passport she wants to show her mother her citizenship document. I think that grace feels that by becoming a citizen she is separating from her mother and her family. By the end of the story grace has her passport and Caroline is married and it seems that the family has somewhat moved on and grown up.
"Caroline's Wedding" has a lot of symbols, but the one that I first think of is the bone soup. On page 159 it says "Ma believed that her bone soup could cure all kinds of ills." When I read this,already having read the story, I guess why they had kept eating bone soup and then wehen I continued reading- there it was: "She even hoped thst it would perform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric, her Bahamian fiance. Since Caroline announced that she was engaged, we'd had bone soup with our supper every single night."
Caroline doesn't like havingbone soup every single night and her mother feels it's because she doesn't appricate it. Just like everything else about their culture. Ma feels this way because Caroline was born in America. She had no experience with Haiti culture other except at home. This is how her mother is trying to change her.
-Mikah
I actually enjoyed this short story immensely, and I'm not joking.
I thought the most striking symbol was Ma's "famous" bone soup. The soup represented the struggle to fit into a new place and culture. However, Ma believed that her soup "could cure all kinds of ills."
Ma feels angered by Caroline's decision on marrying Eric Abrahams, who is a non-Haitian born citizen of the United States. Ever since Caroline told the family that she was engaged, they have had bone soup each and every night. She doesn't seem to understand certain customs of how people are brought together in the United States.
In Haiti, a couple is formed by their parents decision. Ma's father accepted Papa's (with help from Papa's father) proposal on marriage. Ma is optimistic about the whole situation and feels that Caroline should marry a Haitian man. She also feels that he must be approved by her since this is the regular custom of Haiti.
There are a lot of examples of resisting the potential effort to fit in to a whole new atmosphere. The big issue are the contrasting ideas of what's culturally "right" and what's culturally "not right." Caroline has grown up in the States, so she doesn't know marriage differently, whereas Grace is 50-50 since she was born in Haiti but grew up in the US.
I believe that there are many symbols in "Caroline's Wedding," but I feel that the black and gold silk teddy bear was a very important one. "Ma turned her face away as Carolin lifted the present out of the box." To me, this one symbol symbolizes much more. Some of the things it symbolizes are love, maturity, acceptance, and forgiveness. It was very important that Ma did this. You get a sense of the love they have for each other. Though they had been arguing for a while because Ma doesn't agree with who Caroline is marrying, Ma can build up the strength to give a gift as if she is giving her best wishes to their marriage. She is putting her own opinions aside to make Caroline happy and show that she is happy if Caroline is happy. That is how I also feel her mother is being mature. I feel that when you are mature you put others before yourself.
In the story "Caroline's Wedding” by Edwidge Danticat, one of the main characters, Caroline, is getting married. Unfortunately her mother does not want her to get married so instead she tries to constantly remind her that she does not approve of her marriage. One of the ways she does this is by making bone soup every night. The narrator says, “Ma believed that her bone soup could cure all kinds of ills. She even hoped that it would detach Caroline from Eric, her Bahamian fiance.” (Danticat 159) I feel that not only is this a symbol of her mothers negative attitude towards the wedding but also of the general feeling of the Haitian culture trying to preserve itself. Through the mother, the Haitian culture lives and is constantly reminding the children, but when the children grow up, there will be no one to preserve it.
Once again, the bone soup not only symbolizes the mothers feelings towards the wedding, but also the resilience of the Haitian culture.
In Caroline's wedding caroline and Grace and their mother are in the kitchen and caroline refuses to eat the bone soup and more and i think that is a symbol of the break of tradition. Another symbol is the red panties, they say that someone in their family has left and isn't coming back and the black panties symbolize that they are always welcome back. I think that this is a symbol because it is somthing that their family all believe in.
In the beginning of the story, "Carolines Wedding", Grace gets to a phone and calls her mom to tell her she is a citizen. Grace says "I am a citizen, Ma." I think that shows that a lot of people who are immigrants want to be citizens. The way she describes being a citizen is important too, "The paper they gave me, it looks nice.... It's wide like a diploma and has a gold seal with an offical looking signature at the bottom. Maybe I will frame it." I think that shows that they care for the papers of admittance to America a lot. You can tell the way she explains in details the way it looks. You can hear that she was happy. You know that nothing they ever had before meant so much.
One symbol of Caroline's Wedding is the missing fore arm. It is what motivates Caroline to marry Eric. Not just for love but also for the economic crisis. When marrying Eric it allows her to get out of the predicament and then result in a prosthetic limb. It shows the motivation for hope.
Caroline herself is a symbol of America. She doesn't care for her family as much as her sister does.Caroline has become 'American-ized' She constantly was on her phone, she had no respect for her mothers wishes, and she married someone who was not from their country. This was the ultimate slap in the face for Grace's and Caroline's mother. She expected to have the power to approve or disaprove of her daughters marriage as her mother had and her mothers mother had before her. Now that they are in America however that is all different.
A symbol that i noticed in Caroline's Wedding was the bone soup because it showed how much her mother followed their tradition. When Caroline's sister is in a position that she is in, it is hard to decide what to do, should she stay with the family's tradition or should she move on and live her life like her sister is doing. When the mother makes some bone soup for Caroline and Caroline refuses to eat it because she does not like it, i got a feeling that said she was tired of the soup, she wanted some thing new. A quote I picked was when Caroline said "This soup is really getting on my nerves," Caroline whispered in my ear as she walked by the stove to get some water from the kitchen faucet. Like i said before this quote is showing she is tired of the old and wants some thing new. She wants a different life, a life that her mother did not have, one where she does not have to follow their culture. By Isaiah
earlier blog post:
A big symbol in Caroline's Wedding is the Bone Soup. It's the mom's favorite recipe, she believe it can cure everything from emotional to physical illnesses. But the Mom uses it most to try and cure what she believes to be Caroline's mental illness, marrying a non Haitian man. This is a big symbol because it clearly presents this resentment toward American culture. This belief of wanting things to remain constant. one important quote about soup is when the main character Grace says, " Ma believed her soup can cure all types of ills. she even hoped it would preform the miracle of detaching Caroline from Eric, her... fiance.´" Bone Soup is a major theme.
Addition to earlier blog post.
Bone soup is also a major theme because it is something that was a part of the mothers major life in Haiti. it is important when coming to a new place to have an anchor, like a church, community center, or friend. but for the mother it is Bone Soup. Bone Soup can also be something that reminds tho mother of her mother and how she raised her.The mother was probably told that it had all types of medicinal purposes, maybe even magic. So when she became a mother she wanted to assure that her children shared that magic. So in a way it was a passed down tradition. Bone Soup was a big cause for change.
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