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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Haiti office opened in 2002 and focused on preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS, providing care and treatment to those already infected, increasing laboratory and strategic information capacity, and building health care infrastructure.

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“Children of the Sea” through the Psychological Lens.

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“Children of the Sea” through the Psychological Lens.

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Reading through the psychological lens requires us to not only read, but also question and analyze the why, the how, the where, and the when. Then, taking each of these into consideration, helps us better understand the motives, decisions, desires, and thoughts of the characters. By asking the why, how, where and when questions while reading “Children of the Sea,” we not only gain a better understanding of the two main characters, but also greater understanding of Edwidge Danticat, the author of the “Children of the Sea,” which appears in Krik? Krak! – a collection of short stories by Danticat, a Haitian-American. As I read this story, I constantly asked myself why the characters were doing what they were doing and what their actions meant to the greater story dialog.

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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Background on the Author and the setting of the “Children of the Sea”.

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Background on the Author and the setting of the “Children of the Sea”.

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Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti; however, her parents left her and her brother in Haiti with an aunt and uncle to come and live in the United States. While she did move to the United States at a later time, she had a difficult time assimilating due to her language and social mannerisms. Danticat bases many of her stories around her personal life and those individuals with whom she interacts. “Children of the Sea” tells the tale of a person forced to migrate to the United States to escape the current Haitian political climate. The story is told through letters that the character writes to a lover still back in Haiti. In terms of history, many Haitians immigrated to the United States after the fall of the Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship in the 1980s. The trip to the United States was and is treacherous and stressful on the human body and mind. The boats that the migrants use are ramshackle and require constant fixing. Even when the refugees due arrive in the United States, they are not often welcomed with open airs and face complicated political decisions and situations upon their arrival. All these factors have a tremendous effect on a person’s decisions and thought processes. These tough decisions will often change a first person’s priorities and even how they look at the world. As seen in “Children of the Sea,” both priorities of each character and their world outlook change from optimistic at the beginning to final pessimistic, negative viewpoint as the situation in which the characters are placed becomes worse and worse. While the story ends with the implied death of the character who was forced to migrate – death is and was an all too common consequence of the trip -- the story does reveal that life does and most go on, even in the worst of situations.

The Editors Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Edwidge Danticat, Haitian American Author;" Encyclopaedia Britannica, inc. 2018.
Schulz, Jennifer and Jeanne Batalova. "Haitian Immigrants in the United States," Migration Policy Institute, 2017.

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Haitians face tumultuous journey from Brazil to U.S. border | Miami Herald

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Haitians seeking a chance to enter the United States face a perilous trip from Brazil to the U.S. border.

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The Psychological Lens, when applied to a story, provides a greater understanding of the thoughts and emotions behind a person / character’s train of thought. This lens not only analyzes the decisions, relationships, and thoughts of the individual characters of a given story, but also that of the author as well. Why did the author write this; why did the author talk about an issue / event in a certain manner; how does the author’s life affect the writing style and content – the theme and focus of the story? Through the Psychological Lens, readers gain not only a deeper understandings of the story’s content, but also the motives and desires of the author. The Psychological Lens seeks to answer the questions that remain unanswered by other types of lens analysis. This Lens attempts to answer more of the where, the why, and the when of a story and not so much the who does what in the story.
Delahoyde, Michael. "Psychoanalytic Criticism,"  Washington State University

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There are many factors and variables that go into how a person makes decisions. The time, the place, the environment are all factors affecting the ways and kinds of decisions that a person makes in the course of everyday life. Emotion also plays a large part into how a person goes about making decisions. In the case of “Children of the Sea,” the two main characters are influenced greatly by not only the environment surrounding them, but also their own emotions towards one another and their feelings in relation to their surroundings. Furthermore, in times that are stressful outside of the normal, a person’s decisions not only tend to be more erratic, but also more susceptible to outside influences than these same decisions otherwise would be. Likewise, the affects of these decisions tend to be exacerbated and may have a more positive or negative affect on an individual than if the decision was made under normal, less traumatic or stressful circumstances. Decisions make under duress and outside the normal course of life are what drive the plot of “Children of the Sea” and provide a mirror of what may happen to an individual making decisions in regards to real-life problems and solutions. The emotions of these characters come alive of the page and the situations appear more realist.  The characters almost appear life-like and not just characters in a fictional world.
Dietrich, Cindy. "Decision Making: Factors that Influence Decision Making, Heuristics Used, and Decision Outcomes," Inquiries Journal, 2010.