Hope

      

Hope. Everyone has felt it either enter or leave their body. It's an anxious, happy, joyous, fearful and sad emotion wrapped up into one. People become anxious with the fear that they will either be elated to find out that their hope came true or that they'll be utterly devastated that it was all for nothing. It's a natural human emotion that no one can escape. It makes you on edge constantly or it might just be faith in something good to come. Whether you are hoping that there will one day be peace in this world or you hope that you got an A on your assignment, hope is inescapable. Some say it is useless, and others use it in their everyday life just to get by, just to imagine how things could be.

In "Children of the Sea", the female narrators mother, Manman states, "People are just too hopeful, and sometimes hope is the biggest weapon of all to use against us. People will believe anything." You can tell right away that she is jaded by giving into hope herself. She is so opposed to hoping because she has been let down one too many times. Haiti, at the time this was written, was still in shambles. The female narrator describes how the mother had heard a rumor that the old president of Haiti was coming back. She was so excited to hear that her home would be saved from this terror. However, she soon found out that when other Haitian people who had also heard that the president was returning, had quickly fled to the airport to greet him at his arrival. Sadly, the macoutes arrested and/or killed all of the people that had hoped because in Haiti, that was considered rebellion.

From this event, we can now see why her mother is so aggravated with hope and believes its all lies. Every time she believes something good will happen, something awful happens in return. The people of Haiti are in despair and most people have simply "given up".

 It really goes to show you that where we live (America), we are so privileged and don't need to worry about living in such conditions. But it makes you wonder; what do we have hope in? Our next big project? Love? Hope in a better tomorrow? If the president didn't have hope in his election, where would he be today? If our parents didn't have hope in us, how did we get so far? Whatever your hope may be, it will always be what drives you as a human being and it's initially what makes our world go round.