El Mozote and Farming of Bones: Comparing Two Massacre Narratives
This paper compares two literary accounts of historical massacres: Mark Danner's journalistic work The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War and Edwidge Danticat's fictionalized novel The Farming of Bones. The paper examines how each author depicts the events of their respective massacres, the role of government complicity — particularly that of the United States — and the human consequences endured by survivors. It also contrasts the authors' narrative techniques, noting Danner's factual, chronological journalism against Danticat's metaphor-rich fictional framework, and explores how both works ultimately challenge readers to question the selective compassion of powerful governments in the face of atrocity.
- Introduction: Authors use literature to expose injustice and atrocity
- Danner's Account of the El Mozote Massacre: Graphic journalistic reconstruction of the 1981 massacre
- American Government Complicity and Public Denial: U.S. funding, Reagan denial, and media coverage
- Danticat's The Farming of Bones: A Fictional Lens on Historical Atrocity: Metaphor and fiction frame the 1937 Haitian massacre
- Key Differences Between the Two Works: Contrasting narrative style, focus, and aftermath coverage
- Shared Themes and Conclusions: Both books challenge American hypocrisy and selective compassion
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper sustains a clear comparative framework throughout, consistently returning to both texts rather than treating them separately in isolation.
- It identifies meaningful contrasts in narrative technique — journalistic fact versus fictional metaphor — and connects those contrasts to each author's thematic goals.
- The recurring focus on U.S. government complicity provides a unifying analytical thread that ties both works together despite their very different settings and styles.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates sustained comparative literary analysis, using both texts as primary sources to identify thematic parallels and structural differences. Rather than summarizing each book in turn, the writer moves between them to show how similar subjects — massacre, persecution, and government indifference — can be treated through entirely different narrative modes, and what is gained or lost by each approach.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a brief reflection on authorial intent and introduces both works. It then examines Danner's account in detail, including the events at El Mozote and the U.S. government's response. It turns next to Danticat's novel, exploring its metaphorical and fictional dimensions. The final sections draw explicit comparisons across focus, technique, aftermath, and the shared theme of American hypocrisy, closing with a statement on what both works demand of their readers.
Introduction
Throughout history, authors have used their works to prove a point or send a message to their readers. Sometimes the message is delivered with a bluntness that cannot be ignored; other times it is a more subtle undertaking in which the reader is guided to a conclusion without being fully aware of the journey. Regardless of the approach, when an author does it with finesse the result is a solid piece of literature. Two classic examples of authors using their talent in this way are The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War by Mark Danner and The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat. In each of these books the authors provide a complete picture of a massacre, laying out events in graphic detail that cannot be ignored or dismissed.
In each book the author provides the reader with a front-row view of the horrors endured as the massacres unfolded. Each book tells a similar story of brutal murder, yet each has significant differences that set them apart from one another.
Danner's Account of the El Mozote Massacre
In The Massacre at El Mozote, Mark Danner describes the massacres that occurred in El Mozote in graphic detail. Danner painstakingly reconstructs the events leading up to and during the massacre. The December 1981 event is recounted with moment-by-moment detail as well as broader historical context. Over 750 men, women, and children were murdered during this event. The book discusses the cause of the massacre and leads the reader to understand that it was rooted in a struggle for control over the religious convictions of those who died. The Christian majority in the area were not openly rebellious, according to Danner, but were quiet and steadfast in their support of liberation theology.
The massacre began with acts of brutality — rape, torture, and the abuse of children at the hands of those who would eventually carry out the murders. The abuse lasted several days, and Danner conveys the fear and panic that must have coursed through the minds of those who suffered. The escape of several victims before the killings were completed allowed the world to learn what had occurred, and Danner attempts to rouse the American public to the anger he felt at his own government's refusal to acknowledge the horrors inflicted upon the victims.
The author deploys the emotions of the reader to drive home his argument. He describes the discovery of 23 children's bodies in a shallow grave — enough to move even the most stoic reader. If that were not sufficient, he also recounts the discovery of more than 100 additional bodies, including women and children, in a nearby lot. The El Mozote massacre stands as one of the worst atrocities of the Salvadoran Civil War, and Danner's account remains one of its most thorough records.
American Government Complicity and Public Denial
Danner spends much of his book condemning the contradiction between America's stated promotion of liberty and freedom and its willingness to turn a blind eye to the atrocities visited upon those massacred and the loved ones they left behind. He attacks the funding provided by the United States to El Salvador's military, underscoring American financial complicity as nearly as monstrous as the massacre itself. The author is notably objective in his approach, detailing the attempts by several American officials to alert Washington to the situation — attempts that ultimately came to nothing.
The decapitation of infants and the hanging of children by troops trained with American dollars shocked reporters who investigated the claims. Danner, himself a journalist who reported on the horrors firsthand, notes that even in the face of such reporting, the American government — and President Ronald Reagan specifically — denied that the massacre had occurred. Reagan and his cabinet insisted to the American public that the stories were a propaganda effort by anti-American factions, and that the accounts were fueled by those angered by American support and training of troops in the region. Danner acknowledges that some of this framing may have been partially accurate — the stories were seized upon for propaganda purposes — but argues that this had no bearing on the fundamental truth of what happened.
The massacre reached the front page of the Washington Post and the New York Times at precisely the moment Congress was debating whether to continue funding El Salvador's military (Danner, p. 9). The debate centered on the military's well-documented record of brutality. Those who supported continued funding dismissed the reporting as politically motivated — propaganda designed to undermine public support for the mission. Danner's book works to present the evidence chronologically and through multiple forms of documentation, refusing to allow that dismissal to stand.
References
Danner, M. The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War.
Danticat, E. (2000). The Farming of Bones.
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