Still Free, Still Alive: Images of Haitian Collective Values Portrayed Through Child Characters in Lamartine’s Toussaint Louverture and Agnant’s Alexis d’Haïti

Authors

Vanessa C. Marcano, South Dakota State University

Faculty Mentor

Molly Krueger Enz

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the fundamental Haitian values of the struggle for freedom and the prevailing desire for independence are portrayed through the morals and personality of two child characters found in texts set in Saint-Domingue/Haiti. The first character is a young girl named Adrienne in Alphonse de Lamartine’s play Toussaint Louverture (1850) and the second is a young boy named Alexis in Marie-Célie Agnant’s novel Alexis d’Haiti (1999). Through these two characters, Lamartine and Agnant depict Haiti’s struggle to achieve freedom and to retain its unique cultural identity that has allowed this nation once called the “pearl of the Caribbean” to survive. [Page 132-33]

Recommended Citation

Marcano, Vanessa C. (2011) "Still Free, Still Alive: Images of Haitian Collective Values Portrayed Through Child Characters in Lamartine’s Toussaint Louverture and Agnant’s Alexis d’Haïti," The Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 9, Article 17.
Available at: https://openprairie.sdstate.edu/jur/vol9/iss1/17