Essay Questions

Illustrate the character traits of Francis Sancher as implied in Maryse Conde’s Crossing the Mangrove.

Francis Sancher is not only a considerate individual, but he is also caring. After he manages to win over the people of Guadeloupe, following the fear that he has of dying at 50 years old, he does not allow people to get to him emotionally to help reduce the magnitude of the effect his death would have on them. While this brings out his considerate and caring nature, it also alludes to his fright, the fear of impending death. In this way, Sancher can be argued as both caring, considerate, and fearful.

Explore the theme of friendship as brought out in Maryse Conde’s Crossing the Mangrove.

Set in a society where xenophobia is a significant threat, Maryse Conde explores the theme of true friendship embodied by some of the characters in her work. Specifically, Conde employs Francis Sancher and Moase as accurate embodiments of the concept of true friendship. After Sancher arrives in the village of Guadeloupe, the villagers being largely afraid of strangers do not take too well to his presence. Even so, a friendship strikes between Sancher and Moase, a friendship so deep that the villager’s term it as a homosexual relationship, a profoundly flawed ideology. In this sense, the two characters become symbols of friendship in Conde’s novel.

Why does Francis Sancher decide to leave for the village of Guadeloupe?

The belief of being cursed is the principal reason why Francis Sancher takes on himself to travel to Guadeloupe, the land of his ancestors, to try and unravel the reality behind the deaths of the male relatives in his bloodline at the age of fifty. Sancher is of the idea that traveling to Guadeloupe would perhaps provide enough reason or an explanation of these mysterious deaths. He intends to face the bull by the horns.