Curious Researcher - Blog #8

Last time in class we were asked to come up with a thesis. Now that we have done that, we are going to start writing the paper. But instead of just jumping in and getting started, the book gives nine different ways to write a "lead" to your paper: anecdote, scene, profile, background, quotation, dialogue, question, contrast, or announcement. Our job was to take three of these options and make three different leads to the paper. It gives different perspectives on how the paper can begin. The three I chose were scene, background and question.

1) Scene

 

Henry was walking home after a long days work at the plantation. He was tired and sore. The master had beaten him again. Henry didn’t know why. All he did was take three seconds to take a sip of water. Why did they have to be so mean to him? After all, he was only nine. Henry sighed and kept walking through the dark and quiet streets of Bois-Caiman. Then he perked his head up. That was what was wrong. Why was it so quiet and dark? Where were the people walking home from work? Why was there no noise in the mud huts? What was going on? That’s when Henry heard it: the distant, rhythmic beating of drums. All the sudden he stopped thinking about his aching bones and tried to find out where the noise was coming from.  Henry remembered talk quietly going through the town of a possible slave revolt.  It didn’t sound good. The masters would be angry and probably beat him again. Henry didn’t want that to happen; he got beat at least once or twice on a good day at the plantation. Henry kept walking towards the steady beat of drums and soon began to see the smoke from a fire.  Then he heard the chanting. This was not good. Henry remembered his sister coming back from a meeting like this and talking about how terrible and scary it was. She said the spirits were there and everything around felt like it had an evil presence. But Henry wanted to find out what was going on.  As he got closer he started seeing people dressed in scary masks and dancing around the fire to the beat of drums: boom, boom, BOOM, boom, boom, BOOM.  All of the sudden, it all stopped: the dancing, the drums, the chanting. The Boukman, the vodou priest of the town, came forward and clapped his hand twice above his hands. Two men smeared with paint and something that resembled grease brought out a pig kicking and squealing. The Boukman started chanting something intelligible to Henry and held up a knife. The pig was brought before him. With a swift but steady slice of the blade, the pig was silenced. Henry didn’t want to watch the rest. His sister was right. Something had just happened before his eyes, something big. How big, now that Henry didn’t know.

Though Henry is a fictional character, what Henry witnessed was the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. Henry had stumbled upon a sacred meeting where the vodou priest promised the island to the spirits, or Satan, if they were successful in winning the Haitian Revolution.  On August 14, 1791 something that may have resembled a scene like the above paragraph took place. In a place called Bois-Caiman, the Haitians, tired of being treated inhumanly, banded together and resolved to kill all of the French who were on the island. This began one of the first successful slave revolts, which was the beginning of the country of Haiti. Before Haiti revolted, it was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere, but the economy of Haiti swiftly declined into the poorest country in the world over the next 200 years.

2) Question

 

Can you imagine growing up on an island that Satan, the devil, owned? What about being a slave as a child, living through war as a teen, and living your adult years free? If you lived in Haiti during the end of the 18^th century, this may have been your life.  With Haiti, so heavily involved in the vodou culture that came from Africa, when the slaves wanted freedom from the plantation owners, looked to the spirits for help. Haitian’s were making the French rich by working their plantations, and their reward was being beaten in the hot sun working from sun up to sun down. When the decision was made to revolt against the French plantation owners, life as they knew it was over. Haitian’s turned their back on God and gave themselves to the devil.

3) Background

 

In the late 18^th century, Haiti was the richest country in the Western Hemisphere. There were several plantations owned both by Haitian’s and the French. Things like sugar, coffee, oils, cocoa and salt were exported to foreign countries making them very rich. A nickname given to Haiti was the Pearl of Antilles. The problem with this was that the plantation owners were very mean to the slaves. The slaves soon became intolerant of the French plantation owners. After a vodou ceremony in the woods, the island sought help from Satan and revolted against the French. They had promised Satan control of the island if he helped them win the revolt. When they won thirteen years later in 1804, Satan was given power over the island. While they were known as the richest country in the 18^th century, this ceased as the next two centuries proved to be Haiti’s decline. They went from being the “Pearl of Antilles,” to the poorest country in the world. Much can be said about the direction Haiti has been heading, but it can be linked very directly to this particular event in history.