Roots and Routes

Bethel through her engagement of tones that are satirical, sarcastic and pensive makes an effective argument as to the fluidity of the Bahamian national identity. Whenever Bethel describes people thinking that “one” thing describes the national identity she always uses a sarcastic tone referring to that viewpoint as “absurd”, “extol” or puts air quotes around worlds like “authentically Bahamian.” However, when she describes her viewpoint she has a pensive tone with use of inclusive language like ‘we’ or ‘our.” Two examples of this is when she says “we know not one identity but among them, landing now here, now there, as it suits us” and “we prefer to emphasis flux over fixity, change over stagnation.” Bethel is very sarcastic in her tone when describing Fox Hill she says that it is the “immutable symbol of Bahamianness,” and “the quintessence of our national spirit” and “like the statues in the square in the square or the straw market or the flag, a symbol whose meaning melts when you look at too long?” She is almost mocking Fox Hill because it is what many describe as the “ideal Bahamian identity.” Through the tone of satire she dispenses of this truth by continually showing that Fox Hill’s history is malleable and fluid always changing. Bethel builds the readers up to feel that we have found the marker of national identity but dispenses of this marker by showing that “travel is untethered, collective life is recognized to be made up of many different routes Identity can freely be regarded as a garden planted with trees, but as a sea spotted with islands, and one’s own reality as a series of migrations among them.”

Bethel employs a variety of strategies in advancing her argument. The three that were most effect were her use o...

... middle of paper ...

...she refutes this with strong counterarguments about the changes that has happened to Fox Hill; thus the need to view the village not as the marker of Bahamian identity but as this malleable, fluid source of “Bahamianness” that is free from stagnation. When Bethel discusses the Pierce Lewis Theory of Monuments she introduces this argument of monuments amping the reader to think that the marker of the ideal Bahamian national identity is in Rawson's Square. However, after Bethel attributes the un-relatable nature of this argument to the Bahamian context any hopes of monuments being the cornerstone of national identity was washed away. This style of writing is very effective because what it does is introduce what the reader may be thinking and then logically proves why this viewpoint is wrong. As a result, allowing the reader to see that only her viewpoint makes sense.