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The story talks about a couple that is deeply in love. As in any other love story, there are parties who are against their love to each other. In the case of this story it is the female character's father. Later in the story she starts to appreciate hip because of his sacrifice of all of his possessions in order to protect the female narrator form the local bandits: the macoutes. The couple write love letters to each other but they do not read them.  At some point her family neighbor gets killed by the bandits which terrifies the family. as the story progresses the male character flees Haiti. There is a teenager, named Celianne in the boat with him. She is pregnant due to being raped by macoute.  A terrible thing happens to her while she is on the boat: her baby dies. Not able to bare this she throws the baby as well as herself overboard. Towards the end of the story the female narrator sees a black butterfly. She takes it as an omen of her lover's death.

(Paraphrased from SparkNotes Summary)

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While consumed in their reading, individuals tend to analyze the text through several different lenses; sometimes individually and sometimes through several lenses at a time. One of those such lenses is a Psychological Lens: a lens that helps a person notice details in human behavior in their text. Through this lens, a reader is able to answer such questions as, "Why a certain character acts the way they do? Through what kind of range of emotions do characters in the story go through? What kind of moral or ethical Choices did these individuals make through out the story? What are some broader social issues the text attempts to point out?"
(NCC Fall 2018 Literature of Diversity; adapted from VonSteuben Metropolitan Science Center)

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Here is a little bit of background information on the author. Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian-American short story writer who was born on January 19, 1969. She attended and graduated Barnard College with a Bachelor's degree and later Brown University with her Masters in Fine Arts. Edwidge Danticat has received numerous awards for her work in story writing. A few of those awards are Fiction Award the Caribbean Writer, American Book Award, and Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Writing. In this class we have read several of her short stories and I chose to analyse Psychological Critical Lens for "Children of the Sea".  This short story is very interesting to read and has a lot to think about.

(Brief informative data found at Wikepedia)

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"The Tonton Macoute or simply as the Macoute was a special operations unit within the Haitian paramilitary force created in 1959 by dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier." ( The Tonton Macoute, Wikipedia)
It was "founded...to defend the autocratic and corrupt regime of the Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. ...Tonton Macoutes, was notorious for corruption and brutality. In Haitian Creole mythology, Tonton Macoutes was a bogeyman who kidnapped errant children in the night and stored them in his knapsack. Those who were kidnapped, it was said, were never seen again. Appropriatly, the name was applied to the MVSN when many Haitians who spoke out against Duvalier's increasingly corrupt regime were frequently kidnapped in the middle of the night and would disappear forever."  (Tonton Macoutes, BlackPost)

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Looking at the Story Through a Psychological Lens

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Looking at the Story Through a Psychological Lens

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While reading the story it becomes evident the struggle and the pain that the author tries to portray through the main characters of the story.  Edwidge Danticat did a great job of describing through a narrative of the story the struggle that the Haitian people were going though during the brutal dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. The struggle of the characters is very evident. Whether it be the fear of the family after the murder of their neighbor by the macoutes, the anger and frustration of the female character towards her dad's objection of her love to the ale character, who was part of Youth Federation, or the feeling of despair, loss, physical and psychological pain of the teenager who was raped by the macoute and then lost her child during here voyage on the boat., which in turn forced her to take her own life. While reading the story it is hard not to feel sad or cry , since the story has so many feelings embedded in it.  The fact that Edwidge Danticat chose not to give her two main charecter name is an excellent move to incompass the thousands of Haitian who struggled through the difficult times of the Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier regime.