Memory can have different effects on different people. Memory can be positive or negative. Memory can leave a person with a fear every time they remember. People tend to bypass their memory or even start forgetting what happen in the past. Edwidge Danticat “Westbury court” focuses on an event that happens during her childhood and is still affecting her in her childhood. I can relate to Edwidge Danticat. I also had an event that happened to me and I believed it had to happen to make me who I am today.
I also try to forget things that happen to me. I believed everything in life is a lesson learned. Some of my memories can be hurtful they actual shape who I have become. “Westbury Court” by Edwidge Danticat tells a story that had happen to her. The story about a fire that happen in her building. The fire killed two kids in the process and this event seen to stay in her memory. The fire had a great impact on Danticat because it could have easily been her and her sibling instead of the other children.
The memories the author had of Westbury Court wasn’t so pleasant. But it’s as she got older she start to think back about what had happen and why the event’ in her life was significant. Everyone must go through something to learn. Later on you start too realized why you been through it. Danticat lived in the building off of Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn called Westbury court. It was a low income community. It was dangerous and unpleasant to live. She felt we she lived were a dead end. Nowhere to go and no there wasn’t any change.
Her essay mainly focuses on a fire that happens when she was fourteen. Edwidge Danticat wasn’t a wear of the fire because she and her brothers were watching TV. When firemen came knocking on their door and escorted them outside. They were the last people to leave the building. While they ran by the apartment that cached firer they notice inside was filled with bright flames and smoke. While outside an ambulance arrived in the front of the building and the two firemen who had knocked on their door came out carrying the two children bodies.
The fire made Danticat start to think because her and her brothers were the closest to the fire than everyone else in the building. Danticat leaned that sometime it’s too late to say “I should have” because she’s a child herself. Just like the kids that died she was left home as well to watch over here brothers. The kids that died were because they were playing with matches and their mother step of for just two hours but it was too late when she got back. Danticat realized not only that she lived close to where the fire happened.
She could have been the child playing with the match or watching TV and not realized that a fire started. The information Danticat talk about seems to be very important to her. She gave us these information in the story to show the before and after which makes a turning point in her life. She learned a few things about her after the fire happen. She realized that she wasn’t old enough to watch her sibling and their apartment. She also realized she didn’t pay attention of her surroundings. She talks about the Parent Brothers who moved in the apartment to kids died in to show how alert she was now.
She was playing more attention to every detail about the people who moved in. over all this essay tells us that Edwidge learned from what had happen. “I would always listen carefully for our new tenants, so I’d be the first to know if anything went awry. ”(pg83) She never thought that she would have been living in a violent place. I never thought lot of things that had happen to me would happen. Westbury court is just a memory of her pass and where she lived, it’s a memory that she’s still trying to figure out because time has pass but it seem to still be part of her life.
I feel the same as Danticat. Just like her I had a turning point in my life when I nearly lost my brothers and sister. Just like Danticat I go sometimes go back and think what could I have done better to change the situation but instead the situation just help me make better decisions. Danticat later on moved out of Westbury court three years after the fire. Sometime she and her family been up Westbury court in regards to the memory they had there and the event that occurred.
