Blog 5 - Westbury Court and Alive

In her story "Westbury Court," Edwidge Danticat uses an "accumulation" strategy. First, she sets up the reader's expectations by referencing the fire. The main focus initially appears to be about the fire, but actually it is about what prompted her family to move from Westbury Court. She talks about an innocent life, then the fire, and then a series of deaths, the culmination of which cause her family to move.

In the second paragraph, she mentions the fire and then goes into detail about her after-school routine. The author identifies with the family that had the fire as she also was home alone with her younger brothers while her mother was out of the house. Also, her brother liked to play with matches too. What had happened to the chidlren across the hall could easily have happened to them. In telling this story, Danticat gives no indication that she had ever been afraid prior to the fire.

After relating the deaths of the children, the author interjects her mother's reflection that "sometimes it is too late to say 'I shouldn't have.'" Her mother implied that Danticat had a responsibility to have heard the children scream or should have smelled the smoke, but the author just explains that she was engrossed in the make-believe world of her television show. The author reflects that she is grateful that after the fire her mother arranged for them to stay with another family in the building after school so that she was not wholly responsible for her younger brothers should something like that fire ever happen again.

The author then lists numerous terrible deaths that occurred on her block afterward, but it was the fire that jolted her out of her innnoence. She states that her family moved three years after the fire and that they sometimes mention that street and its events but should anyone mention the fire, her mother would immediately say "sometimes it is too late to say 'I shouldn't have."

In the story "Alive," Laurie Lynn Drummond also uses the "accumulation" strategy. She tells the readers immediately that there is a serial killer on the loose. As she tells the story, she gets closer and closer to him. The tension mounts. The reader can expect that she will have a run-in with this killer. She doesn't. However, she probably experienced all the emotions she would have had she met up with him. This story initially appears to be about the serial killer, but is actually about how vulnerable she is as a woman.