Remembering In Alejo Carpentier's Imagine Community
Forgetting/remembering is an important factor when building a nation. Anderson speaks extensively about this in Imagine Communities. In order for a new nation to thrive the old one must be forgotten–so they can start anew. However, forgetting and remembering tend to blend together. Alejo Carpentier's novel The Kingdom of This World does just that. Being that it is a historical fiction piece Carpentier makes a conscious choice to leave in historic characters: Macandal, Henri Christophe etc. These characters remind the reader of Haiti's history, whereas Ti Noel is a fictitious character. Carpentier uses his characters and story plot to remind people what the Haitian nation has fought for. The role of history, remembering/forgetting in the Haitian ... Show more content on Helpwriting.net ...When Macandal is killed the people believe that he had become "the man Macandal. The one Armed. The restored. The transformed...Ti Noel saw him for the first time since his metamorphoses," (47). They believed he had magic powers that allowed him to transform. The belief that Macandal was still with them in just a different form allowed the people to remember and fight for their rights. Even twelve years later ". Ti Noel passed on the tales of Macandal to his children, teaching them simple little songs he had made in Macandal's honor while currying and brushing the horses," (57). In Create Dangerously the author Edwidge Danticat shares that Haitians still look at storytellers–journalists specifically as a "mix of usefulness–[they] are offering a service to others by providing information–and notoriety makes it an occasionally respectable profession," (28). They are the ones who educate the people so they do not need to feel 'obligated to forget'.
Why do artists create to help remember Haiti's past even if it is not a pleasant thing to remember? People cannot just forget about history or what the nation was like previously. In Haiti specifically, while it was still controlled by the French people's quality of life was even worse than it is today. (put in stats from that article
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