A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

1192 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Girl By jamaica kincaid full poem

Travel Literature Essay - A Small Place

In the work “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, she discusses many things she is not happy with: the ignorant tourist, whom she addresses as the reader, Antigua’s corrupt government, the passiveness of the Antiguan people, and the English who colonized Antigua. This work can be discusses as a polemic because of Kincaid’s simplistic diction, and very confrontational tone throughout the book.

From the beginning, Kincaid introduces the tourist, whom she describes as a white middle-class man from either Europe, U.S., or Canada that is traveling to Antigua because he is bored with his life back home and also to pursue a sense of freedom and excitement. Kincaid goes to describe things like the Japanese cars, and the giant mansions that to the tourist would seem picturesque and fascinating, but has a different significance to the local Antiguan people. The tourists take the good weather for granted and is happy it is not raining while they are on vacation, not letting the thought that this good weather is the cause of the lack of fresh water for the Antiguan people cross their minds. On page 10 of the book, Kincaid addresses to the reader, “and so you needn’t let that slightly funny feeling you have from time to time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged unease, discomfort; you could ruin your holiday”. Kincaid’s sarcastic tone is emphasized in this quote to show her feeling of resentment towards the tourist. She feels that the tourist does have an idea of the past history and present difficulties of a place like Antigua, but just chooses to suppress those thoughts so they will not ruin their holiday. The funny feeling Kincaid is referring to is the tourist ...

... middle of paper ...

... and in a way the injustice will always continue.

In conclusion, Kincaid describes the state of Antigua in a very subjective manner. She is very straightforward about her resentment towards the ignorant tourists who exploit the poor Antiguan people for their pleasure, the corrupt government, the passiveness of the Antiguan people and their cultural subservience to the British, and finally the English who enslaved, and colonized Antigua. Throughout the book, Kincaid uses simplistic diction that can be very confrontational to get her points across. In other areas, Kincaid is also sarcastic, especially towards the ignorance of the tourist and the passiveness of the Antiguan people. Furthermore, Kincaid suggests that Antigua’s environmental constraints as being a small place also reflects how trapped the Antiguan people are in the shadow of the colonial past.

Show More
Related

  • Empire's Crossroads Chapter Summary

    933 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fluorescent turquoise waters, a vibrant city culture, as well as an unending supply of mimosas and sunburns within a resort, benefits the common wealthy couple looking for a swell time. When people imagine the Caribbean, they probably visualize the soft sands of the Spice Island Beach Resort. Many people see the Caribbean as relaxing paradise. What people don’t understand, are the years of history hidden behind the mask of many resorts. In the book entitled “Empire’s Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day”, Author Carrie Gibson differentiates how people view the Caribbean nowadays, by altering their visualization with four-hundred pages of rich history and culture, that argues the ideology about the Caribbean

    Read More

  • House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

    948 Words  | 2 Pages

    The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros is about a girl who struggles finding her true self. Esperanza sees the typical figures like Sally and Rafaela. There is also her neighbor Marin shows the “true” identity for women on Mango Street. She also sees her mother is and is not like that at the same time. The main struggle that Esperanza has is with beauty. This explains why most of the negative people that Esperanza meets on Mango Street, and her gender, helped her see the mold she needed to fill in order to give herself an identity.

    Read More

  • The Island by Gary Paulsen

    414 Words  | 1 Pages

    The book I read was The Island by Gary Paulsen. It is about a 15 year

    Read More

  • Home Place By Guy Vanderhaeghe

    542 Words  | 2 Pages

    Each person has a place that calls to them, a house, plot of land, town, a place that one can call home. It fundamentally changes a person, becoming a part of who they are. The old summer cabins, the bedroom that was always comfortable, the library that always had a good book ready. The places that inspire a sense of nostalgic happiness, a place where nothing can go wrong.

    Read More

  • What I Have Been Doing Lately By Jamaica Kincaid

    490 Words  | 1 Pages

    The short story, What I Have Been Doing Lately by Jamaica Kincaid, in my perspective was a representation of two cultures. This story focuses on the two cultures that Jamaica Kincaid came from and also the change in location. What I Have Been Doing Lately, I believe, is a story about how Jamaica feels about the change of scenery when she moves from Antigua to Vermont. The story talks about how the cultures are different but it also captures what it feels like to be homesick.

    Read More

  • LUCY, By Jamaica Kincaid

    541 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the passage from the novel LUCY, author Jamaica Kincaid dramatizes the forces of self and environment, through her character whose identity is challenged with a move. The new home provided all she needed, but it was all so many changes, she “didn’t want to take in anything else” (15-16). Her old “familiar and predictable past”(40) stayed behind her, and she now had to find who she was in her new life. Kincaid uses detail, metaphor, and tone in the passage to show her character’s internal struggle.

    Read More

  • Jamaica Kincaid's On Seeing England for the First Time

    832 Words  | 2 Pages

    Through the use of emotional arguments and social appeal the author, Kincaid, gets the feeling across that she was a victim of England. To get you to feel like the victim she uses lots of metaphors. In the first paragraph she uses the one, “England was a special jewel all right and only special people got to wear it”(p.61). It is right here that the author sets the tone of the essay. She gives you the idea that she was not special enough to put on this gem of England. In doing this she makes a social appeal to anyone looking for a view of colonization. In using descriptive language she make you feel sorry for her in the how she had to “Draw a map of England”(p.63), at the end of every test.

    Read More

  • The Haitian Relationship With the Dominican Republic

    2875 Words  | 6 Pages

    The majority of the nearly 500,000 slaves on the island, at the end of the eighteenth century endured some of the worst slave conditions in the Caribbean. These people were seen as disposable economic inputs in a colony driven by greed. Thus, they receive...

    Read More

  • Love in Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Autobiography of My Mother

    982 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kincaid, Jamaica. The autobiography of my mother . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.

    Read More

  • A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

    1438 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid criticizes tourists for being heartless and ignorant to the problems that the people of Antigua had and the sacrifices that had to be made to make Antigua a tremendous tourist/vacation spot. While Kincaid makes a strong argument, her argument suggests that she doesn't realize what tourism is for the tourists. In other words, tourism is an escape for those who are going on vacation and the tourists are well within their rights to be “ignorant”, especially because no one is telling them what is wrong with Antigua.

    Read More

  • Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid

    1600 Words  | 4 Pages

    Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer who was the first writer and the first individual from her island of Antigua to achieve this goal. Her genre of work includes novelists, essayist, and a gardener. Her writing style has been described as having dreamlike repetition, emotional truth and autobiographical underpinnings (Tahree, 2013). Oftentimes her work have been criticized for its anger and simplicity and praised for its keen observation of character, wit and lyrical quality. But according to Ms. Kincaid her writing, which are mostly autobiographical, was an act of saving her life by being able to express herself in words. She used her life experiences and placed them on paper as a way to make sense of her past. Her experience of growing up in a strict single-parent West-Indian home was the motivation for many of her writings. The knowledge we garnered at an early age influenced the choice we make throughout our life and this is no more evident than in the writings of Jamaica Kincaid.

    Read More

  • A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

    1403 Words  | 3 Pages

    A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Michelle Cliff's Utilization Of Language In Abeng

    1185 Words  | 3 Pages

    I would suggest that this reversal of focus also leads the reader to address the idea of euro-centricity, which the text actively fights with its depictions of the history of Jamaica. Moreover, this is exactly what Shelly Bhoil points out in her article “The Politics of Language, Style and Theme in Raja Rao’s Kanthapur.” She states “Rao has whetted the colonizing master’s own tools such as the English language to dismantle the master’s “euro-centric” house and to renovate it so as to have space for the “natives” who are “othered” to the margins of the mainstream world-consciousness” (82) I believe that this is exactly the same idea that Cliff brings to Abeng. She does this in her rewriting of history to downplay the importance of the white settlers, while still holding onto the significance of her culture. This idea also continues into her adoption of Patois in the novel, that she can dismantle the euro-centricity by including other dialects in order to remove the centralization on formal

    Read More

  • History as the Key to Unlock the Future in Omeros:Philoctete’s Healing, Achille’s Completion, and the Narrator’s Inspiration

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    Set in St. Lucia, Walcott’s Omeros reveals an island possessing a rich past. St. Lucia, a former colony, has a history of ‘pagan’ religion and tradition, a different language, and an economic background based namely on fishing. Locals must try to reconcile their heritage prior to colonization, the influences of colonization, and how to create a new culture from the ashes of the others (Hogan 17).

    Read More

  • Holy Zion A Study of Ethiopianism in Rastafarianism with a Focus on the Concept Of Ethiopia as Zion

    4994 Words  | 10 Pages

    Jamaica 1930 was not the picture of peaceful jungles and calm sunsets that we see in travel agents’ brochures. Jamaica 1930 was a time of economic, social, and natural disaster. As L...

    Read More

More about A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Open Document