An Untamed State Wiki

Welcome to the An Untamed State Wiki
AP Literature Project by Marcel Isper, Jasmine Wright, Valarie Lenzer, Zach Donahue, and Joe Johnston

Summary of the Novel
An Untamed State by Roxanne Gay is a novel of hope and fear as it follows the life of Mireille Duval Jameson as she struggles through thirteen days of horrific conditions in captivity. Miri, the American daughter of Haitian natives, refuses to accept Haiti as her home after she is kidnapped right outside of her family estate. Held hostage by a man who refers to himself as the Commander, Miri suffers from sexual violence and abuse from which she never fully recovers. While in captivity, her father Sebastien refuses to pay the ransom of one million dollars because he doesn't want to lose his dignity to the country's delinquents. Meanwhile, Miri's husband, Michael does everything that he possibly can to bail her out of -- what seems to be -- the Commander's cage. While Sebastien tries to "prove a point" to the captors, he fails to realize that what his daughter is going through will scar her forever, and he will never truly be able to be forgiven by her. This is a story of a woman whose will to survive allows her to endure through the torments of captivity. After Miri is freed she tries to put the pieces of her newly-broken life back to how they once were in her previously perfect life; however, she soon realizes that nothing will ever be the same as she struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Haiti's Background
Until recently, abductions in Haiti have been very common. The majority of the Haitian population is very poor, and there are very little opportunities for them to earn money. Some of these people who find themselves lacking a sufficient amount of money turn to the kidnapping business to solve their problem. The poor are not solely at fault. Corruption has plagued Haiti for an extended amount of time. The police are participating in these crimes against humanity. According to Kim Ives, one of the founders and editors of the weekly newspaper “Haiti Liberté:” “Most alarmingly, a kidnapping victim of Bellefleur had denounced the cop and some of his associates to the Haitian National Police (PNH) immediately following his release last April, but apparently no action was ever taken” (Ives). The country was--and is--no longer safe and many are subjected to kidnapping. In general, abductions are performed the same way: masked men armed with weapons ambush a well-to-do family at the gates of their home and force someone into their car, speeding off after. Once this is completed, the kidnappers call the daily and offer a ransom for the safe return of the victim. The frequency of these abductions had steadily been rising until 2012, when the United Nations introduced anti-kidnapping support led by Robert Arce, an ex-cop who had previously worked in drug-smuggling units that patrolled the border between the U.S and Mexico. These measures immediately had a positive effect on the number of abductions that were successful. By the end of 2013, the number of kidnappers that were arrested more than quadrupled, and only one new kidnapping was reported. Before these measures were put into place, there was a kidnapping almost every day, and many of the victims were being killed. This was all accomplished on a very limited budget, and in a reasonably short amount of time, given the severity of the problem at hand.

Works Cited

Gage, Julienne. "How Haiti Successfully Curbed Kidnappings." How Haiti Successfully Curbed Kidnappings. InSightCrime, 11 Mar. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. .

Gay, Roxane. An Untamed State. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Ives, Kim. "HAITI: Assassinated Cop Led Kidnapping Ring from Police Station." Global Research. Haiti Liberte, 14 Nov. 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. .