Edwidge Danticat "Ghosts"

This short story deals with gang violence in the slums of Haiti. Pascal was a young boy whose parents owned a restaurant that often served local gang members, or ghosts as they were also called. Pascal ends up getting wound up with the gang because of a radio station where he works and he is blamed for a night shooting that results in the death of a guard at the radio station. Even though he gets out of these charges, what I found most interesting about this story was when Pascal was in the holding cell and the guards were hitting him and laughing at him during his interrogation. He is treated very unjustly while under the care of the Haitian government; he mentions that while he is being punished he does not see any difference between the gang members and the police force. This shows how poverty affects all aspects of a society. Corruption comes from poverty and infiltrates the streets and the government equally, even though it often goes unnoticed in the latter. This story highlights the different aspects of poverty and how it affects different social classes on different levels. Pascal was from a middle class family, ended up getting tied up with a gang from the slums, and is ultimately treated unjustly by the system that is meant to ensure order and protection for the Haitian people. It made me think about the nature of evil and whether or not evil exists in all of us and just needs the proper circumstances, like a poverty stricken environment, to show itself.