[posted on behalf of a student]
The first episode of the HBO series Treme, “Do You Know What It Means,” takes place in New Orleans three months after Hurricane Katrina. It follows the stories of several different characters from different parts of New Orleans and different backgrounds. There is the Bernette family, whose house is off Octavia Street and only had the roof damaged in the storm. Janette Desautel owns her own restaurant that she was able to open up after the storm but is struggling to keep it open as she is short-staffed and doesn’t have enough food for the restaurant. When she is asked about her house, she responds, “Don’t ask me about my house.” Albert Lambreaux, who is a Mardi Gras Indian chief, comes back to New Orleans with his daughter to find his house completely destroyed, but he is determined to stay, so he stays in a bar that is still closed. Antoine Batiste struggles to pay for the cab fare as he doesn’t have a car and doesn’t want to ride on public transportation. Ladonna Batiste-Williams, Antoine’s ex-wife, owns a bar and is still searching for her brother who went missing during the storm. Robinette has a hauling business and is doing well after the storm as FEMA is contracting his business out to help with clean up. Davis McAlary is a struggling musician who only really seems to care about music as his life revolves around it; nothing else really matters to him. All of these characters are so different from each other but also are struggling after the storm, even though their struggles are so different. Even with all of their differences and backgrounds, their lives are still intertwined with each other.
I feel that this was true for those who experienced Hurricane Katrina as well. In most places, these people’s lives would never intersect with one another, but in New Orleans, they do, especially after the storm. People helped each other out where they could, and those that had more tried to help those who didn’t have as much. You can see this with the Bernette family; they didn’t lose their house, but they wanted to help those in their community as they knew they were lucky. Creighton does interviews where he gets very heated and angry about the lack of support New Orleans has before, during, and after the storm. Toni tries to help the people affected by the storm, such as Ladonna, who is desperately trying to find her brother. Toni searches tirelessly for him and figures out that he was on the bridge after the prison flooded. All these characters are just trying to get back to as much of a normal life as possible after the storm just like people did in 2005 after Katrina hit. So far the show seems to be doing a fairly good job of representing the different backgrounds and stories of the people of New Orleans who actually went through this.