terms and me trying to define them

Biographical info about the author:

• Born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
• Parents immigrated to to New York and left her and her brother to be raised by aunt/uncle
• Childhood was influenced by studying/storytelling/church
• Bilingual in French/Hatian Creole
• Started writing at 9, moved to Brooklyn @ 12 to join her parents and dealt with unfamiliarity via literature
• Lived in a mainly haitian community and didn’t understand racism until she went to college
• Wrote an essay about immigration and then wrote a short story which turned into her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory

Timeline for haiti’s history from independence to present day

• 1803: Haitians design a flag that turns the French flag on its side and removes the white band. They gain independence at The Battle of Vertieres
• 1804: On Jan 1, General Jean-Jacques Dessalines declares the plant Haiti (Ayiti in Creole) that means mountainous country
• 1806: Dessalines is assassinated
• 1807-20: Civil war in Haiti divides the country into the northern kingdom of Henri Christophe and southern republic of Alexandre Petion. Christophe’s army rebels and he commits suicide, letting Jean-Pierre Boyer reunify the country and become president of the entirety in 1820
• 1821: President Boyer invades Santo Domingo right after they declare independence from Spain. They control the island until 1844
• 1838: France recognizes Haitian independence in exchange for 150mil frances. They have to take out loans of 70mil francs to pay it off and gain international recognition. Most nations shun Haiti for ~40 years out of fear of causing unrest
• 1862: US grants Haiti diplomatic recognition by sending Frederick Douglass as Consular Minister
• 1915: President Wilson orders US Marines to occupy Haiti and establish the Haitian National Guard. Peasants resist and grow under the leadership of Charlemagne Peralt who then is assassinated in 1919
• 1934: US withdraws from Haiti
• 1937: Haitians living near the Dominican republic are massacred under the orders of Dominican president
• 1957: Duvalier declares himself president for life
• 1971: Duvalier dies in office and declares his 19 y/o son as successor
• 1972: Haitian boat people flee and land in florida
• 1976: widespread protest against restriction of the press take place
• 1970-80s: Baby Doc exploits intl. assistance and looks to invest in textiles. Unions are quickly destroyed
• 1980: 100s of HR workers, journalists, and lawyers are arrested and exiled
• 1983: Pope John Paul II visits Haiti and declares things must change
• 1985: numerous anti-govt demonstrations take place around the country and are unified under the event of four children being shot dead by soldiers
• 1986: widespread protest vs Baby Doc leads to the US arranging for him to be exiled to France and put General henri Namphy in his place
• 1987: a new constitution is overwhelmingly approved. General elections are cut short due to beginning with many people being shot dead soon after opening in november
• 1988: military controlled elections result in Leslie Manigat being installed as President in January. She is ousted by Namphy in 4 months who is ousted by General Prosper Avril in november
• 1989: Pres. Avril orders massive repression against political parties/unions/students/democratic organizations
• 1990: Instability is resolved with the election of Father Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a parish priest
• 1991: A coup is attempted, but fails. They try again 8 months later and 1000+ people die.
• 1992-1995: political things happen that i dont really understand
• 1996: President Preval is inaugurated with a new govt forming under PM Rosny Smarth. They promise agricultural production, administrative reform, and economic modernization.

Haiti’s fight for and gain of independence

• Napoleon tried to use Haiti as a place to get slaves from and they revolted starting in 1791.

Toussaint L’Ouverture

• A former slave gifted with natural military genius and took control of the rebel slaves in 1791.
• Jan 1802, he agrees to a ceasefire and retires to his plantation in 1803 and gets arrested and taken to a dungeon in the French Alps before being tortured and dying in April

Boukman

• A slave in Haiti and one of the more visible leaders of the revolution. He conducted a religious ceremony at the Bois Caiman where a freedom covenant was made. This ceremony a catalyst for the uprising that marked the beginning of the revolution

1937, Dominican massacre

• Trujillo was determined to dominate the entirety of the island and ordered a massacre on 15,000~20,000 Haitians on the dominican side of the massacre river.

Rafael Trujillo

• Dominican politician and soldier, ruled the Dominican Republic from Feb1930-May1961, when he was assassinated. He had a dangerous personality cult and ordered the massacre of 1937

Voodoo religion

• The belief in a distant/unknowable supreme creator known as Bondye who doesn’t care about Human affairs but his spirit servants Ioa do, and they care about a lot of human stuff so they worship the Ioa.

Duvalier (Papa Doc)

• Used a cult of personality to help his rule. Was a physician prior to election and frequently ran and won in unannounced elections before taking the title “President for Life” in 1964 before naming his son his successor on his deathbed.

Tonton Macoute

• The Macoute was a special ops unit in the Haitian military created by Papa Doc in 1959 and were named after a Haitian myth of a bogeyman that kidnapped and punished bad children and put them in in a sack and eat them for breakfast later.

Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc)

• Papa Doc’s successor and son, lived an extremely lavish lifestyle while most of his country suffered from extreme poverty. His strong anti-communist stance helped his relations with the US. He was forced to flee to France after rebellion in 1986.

Krik? Krak! notes

Children of the Sea

• There are two people in love and one of them seems to be lost at sea
• One of them is escaping from haiti
• The female narrator seems to be suicidal in a sense
• Their parents disapprove of the relationship
• Some group makes parents sleep with their children of the opposite sex
• The male was part of a radio station that got attacked by the same group
• The father is very afraid of them
• Someone gives birth to a baby. The boat has 3 cracks in it and no more food
• The mother is very hopeful
• group=macoutes?
• The baby might have been born still
• The girl is definitely suicidal
• The baby’s mother was raped by many soldiers and her brother was arrested for moral crimes. She throws the baby and herself overboard. She’s 15
• The girl is kinda spiritual
• The boy is forced to throw his letters in the sea
• They accept they will be apart, and he’s most likely dead.

draft 2

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the character of Friar Lawrence is extremely pivotal to the plot. His dual nature and personality is a key element to the plot, as his twin morals impact the entire outcome of the play. While Friar Lawrence does display two major conflicts throughout the play. The more prominent one would be his choice between if he ought to decide to act morally incorrect but chance saving the city and ending the feud, or if he should choose to remain faithful to his ideals but risk plunging Verona into even more violence and chaos.

In addition to this life threatening decision, Friar Lawrence’s other display of duality lie within his coexisting beliefs in both science and religion, two concepts that are known to frequently contradict each other. However, his opening monologue from Act 2, Scene 3, illustrates something that isn’t contrast—but isn’t collaboration—through the frequent juxtaposition of flowers and morals:

“Within the infant rind of this weak flower,

Poison hath residence and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;” (2.3.23-29)

These frequent displays of comparison between virtues and herbology provides us with an interesting view into the perspective of the friar. While he is a man of the cloth, and a highly respected one at that, he isn’t a traditional priestly figure, one who tries to accept both walks of thought but still has to struggle with the consequences of doing so. He does manage to find parallels between these two schools of thought, but they don’t stop him from being constantly reminded of how he is meant to commit himself to one philosophy regarding life, which in turn causes the dissonance between his two mindsets regarding the situation of the young lovers.

As an actor, I tried to portray his internal conflicts through body language and facial expressions using influence from my own prior experiences and emotions, as well as adding inflections and emphasis to some words when speaking. Due to Shakespeare’s notorious lack of stage blocking in his writings, I used the script to determine how I thought characters would speak and move based on their lines. Because of this, I thought of Friar Lawrence as a character that would not make his uncertainty obvious through his dialogue, and more through his movement and expressions. My way of trying to demonstrate this was where I tried to show that every movement was performed and executed with slow and wise caution, something I tried to contrast to the dynamic and energetic being I envisioned Romeo would be during his rush to beg the Friar to perform the secret marriage. Some of the actions I did were to clasp my hands while speaking, as I associate that motion with elderly wisdom, or to tilt my head as if I were spending a lot of thinking energy on trying to comprehend and determine how to respond to Romeo’s requests. While my partner was not wildly vivid, he was lively enough for me to feel as if I were making a large enough contrast between fast youth and slow age.

Aside from these thoughtful motions, I choose to show his inner clash via my speech. While I didn’t follow the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare wrote in, I decided to place extra emphasis on a few keywords to help the audience take note of the Friar’s more prominent dual beliefs, which, like I believe Shakespeare intended, was meant to be noticeable for the audience so they would associate the character with being at a constant crossroads. This mostly took place during the opening monologue—which we cut down for balance—where I chose to stress certain words based on how they contrasted with other words from the lines before and after. For example, I enunciated the words light and night in, “The grey-ey’d morn smiles on the frowning night,/Check’ring the Eastern clouds with streaks of light,” (2.3.1-2) to bring the contrast of dark and dawn into prominence for the audience to take note of.

In addition, I used my previous experiences and emotions from that situation to influence the way I wanted to show how Friar Lawrence would react. Similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet, I was a bystander to two friends in a relationship that I didn’t necessarily agree with. And like the Friar, I was forced to weight the various positives and negatives that would arise, while also having to choose between two mindsets on what I thought was right. My approach to this event was to try and stay relatively neutral on the emotional front, so as to not distress my friends, and to make decisions that would hopefully benefit everyone involved. However, while I was able to tap into this to influence how I acted the role of Friar Lawrence, it also led to my acting to come off as mostly disinterested and almost completely devoid of emotion at times. This could be partly attributed to performance anxiety, but I believe that it was mostly due to this form of method acting as to why.

essay first draft

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the character of Friar Lawrence is extremely pivotal to the plot. His dual nature and personality is a key element to the plot, as his twin morals impact the entire outcome of the play. As an actor, I tried to portray his internal conflicts through body language and facial expressions using influence from my own prior experiences and emotions. While Friar Lawrence does display two major conflicts throughout the play. The more prominent one would be his choice between if he ought to decide to act morally incorrect but chance saving the city and ending the feud, or if he should choose to remain faithful to his ideals but risk plunging Verona into even more violence and chaos. In addition to this life threatening decision, Friar Lawrence’s other display of duality lie within his coexisting beliefs in both science and religion, two concepts that are known to frequently contradict each other. However, his opening monologue from Act 2, Scene 3, illustrates something that isn’t contrast—but isn’t collaboration—through the frequent juxtaposition of flowers and morals:

“Within the infant rind of this weak flower,

Poison hath residence and medicine power;

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part,

Being tasted, stays all senses with the heart.

Two such opposed kings encamp them still

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will;” (2.3.23-29)

These frequent displays of comparison between virtues and herbology provides us with an interesting view into the perspective of the friar. While he is a man of the cloth, and a highly respected one at that, he isn’t a traditional priestly figure, one who tries to accept both walks of thought but still has to struggle with the consequences of doing so. He does manage to find parallels between these two schools of thought, such as when he refers to how both eukaryotic and prokaryotic forms of life are able to contain and be influenced by good and evil powers. Unfortunately, these parallels do not stop him from being constantly reminded of how he is meant to commit himself to one philosophy regarding life, which in turn cause the dissonance between his two mindsets regarding the situation of the young lovers. As a man of faith, he knows he should choose against marrying them in secret. But, as a man who strives for what he perceives as the greater good, he also wishes to have them wed, even if in secret. During his entire conversation with Romeo, Friar Lawrence first presents himself to the younger male as a wise monk who preaches piety to his confidante. And yet, even though he chides him for his foolish love and advises against hasty action, he can’t help but soon switch to thinking of helping the star crossed lovers as well as the city. As I’ve already mentioned, I attempted to portray this hidden contrast by placing emphasis on my speech, as well as body language and facial expressions. Due to Shakespeare’s notorious lack of stage blocking in his writings, I used the script to determine how I thought characters would speak and move based on their lines. Because of this, I thought of Friar Lawrence as a character that would not make his uncertainty obvious through his dialogue, and more through his movement and expressions. My way of trying to demonstrate this was where I tried to show that every movement was performed and executed with slow and wise caution, something I tried to contrast to the dynamic and energetic being I envisioned Romeo would be during his rush to beg the Friar to perform the secret marriage. While my partner was not wildly vivid, he was lively enough for me to feel as if I were making a large enough contrast between fast youth and slow age. Aside from these thoughtful motions, I choose to show his inner clash via my speech. While I didn’t follow the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare wrote in, I decided to place extra emphasis on a few key words to help the audience take note of the Friar’s more prominent dual beliefs, which, like I believe Shakespeare intended, was meant to be noticeable for the audience so they would associate the character with being at a constant crossroads.

Thesis statement v1

Friar Lawrence's double morality impacts the entire outcome of the play. I attempted to portray these inner conflicts through body language and facial expression influenced by my own prior experiences and knowledge.