Analysis Of Child Of The Dark By Carolina De Jesus

Child Of The Dark
Carolina Maria De Jesus was an Afro-Brazilian woman who lived in a Sao Paulo shanty town, or Favela. During her time in the favela, she kept a dairy of her life experiences which was subsequently published in later years. Carolina De Jesus only had two years of schooling after which she dropped out. She was the mother of three illegitimate children, each born of a different father. Her diary tells the story of her life in São Paulo. This work stands as a vivid social document in which she describes her squalid neighborhood, tells how she lived hand to mouth. In order keep herself and her children barely alive and stave off their ever-present possibility of starvation, Carolina must scavenge for scraps of metal and paper in …show more content…
Her life is a witness to the vicious fights, the knifings, and the deplorability of the favelados—prisoners of poverty, prey of the bourgeois, and the breeders of revolution. De Jesus’ story is a cautionary tale about the social system in brazil in which she lived in. Carolina keeps a diary to assert her sense of self, create a record of life in the favela, and account for the bad actions of both the people around her and the politicians who contribute to the plight of the poor. She tells those who wrong her that they’ll end up in her book, and though this strategy can come across as overbearing, her task is important. She has biting and important things to say about the failure of authority to address the needs of the poor, and her chronicle of the many instances of petty fighting, criminality, racism, and sexism in the society she lives in add up to a powerful portrait. Carolina is a keen reporter, able to bring into focus the existence of a favelado in unexpected and moving ways. While she is often quite critical, she also has a sense of humor that leavens and illuminates aspects of what is otherwise quite a grim story. Each day she would wake up between five o'clock and seven o'clock in the morning to wait in line for …show more content…
The rich would be lost without a place to dump their garbage, Carolina seems to be saying, and this unsettling observation provides a new perspective on the ever-present link between rich and poor. This theme can also be seen through her quest of fighting back at figures of authority in both the church and the government through her writing, Carolina accuses those in power for being blind to the needs of the poor. She chides the president of Brazil for being like a bird in a gilded cage, ignorant of the hungry cats (the favelados) who are circling. n casting the president of Brazil as a bird in a cage, Carolina implies that he is trapped in his own ignorance and is ineffectual at making changes, especially concerning the poor. The image of the bird in a cage makes diminutive a figure of presumably great power. In this construction, Carolina casts the president as a small and confined bird, while the favelados are wild and hungry cats. This symbol is especially interesting in terms of describing a shifting power relationship. Throughout her book, many themes collide with those brought up in Born of fire, such as the themes of poverty and the power divide between the political