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The value of travel essay
Jamaica kincaid girl literary analysis
Jamaica kincaid girl literary analysis
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Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place guides its readers through the small island of Antigua, the author’s native home. The narrative acts like a tour, with Kincaid writing in the second person perspective, thus placing the reader in the shoes of a tourist visiting Antigua. However, readers will quickly catch on to the highly sardonic and condemnatory tone that Kincaid uses; for example, “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” (10). Kincaid persistently hints at the selfishness, ignorance, and thoughtlessness of her readers, who are also the tourists (or potential tourists) of Antigua. Consequently, …show more content…
Kincaid guides her readers through their vacation, illustrating the sights and experiences a typical tourist would encounter while visiting Antigua. However, Kincaid’s words are laced with sarcasm. Kincaid draws upon experiences with real tourists and condemns them by passing this criticism on to her readers. Kincaid writes, “You see yourself taking a walk on that beach, you see yourself meeting new people (only they are new in a very limited way, for they are people just like you). You see yourself eating some delicious, locally grown food. You see yourself, you see yourself…” (13). Here, she is commenting on the vanity of a tourist. By repeating the phrase “you see yourself”, Kincaid is hinting that the tourist does exactly that. The tourist is egotistical, caring only about their own paradisiacal vacation. This is further emphasised when Kincaid mockingly states “you could ruin your holiday” (10). She implies that tourists often turn a blind eye to the corruption that plagues the island and its government, intentionally choosing to overlook the injustice and hardships faced by the Antiguan natives. The “slightly funny feeling” (10) that Kincaid refers to is the tourist’s guilty conscience, thus Kincaid is accusing the tourist of inhumanely placing their own trivial getaway from their relatively comfortable lives over the basic human needs and rights of the natives. By directly addressing her readers, insulting and accusing them of such inconsiderate and heartless behaviour, Kincaid is trying to inflict feelings of guilt, hoping that her readers would reflect on the way they act when they inhabit another’s
Ayiti, by Roxane Gay, is a collection of fifteen short narratives about Haiti and its people, which gives the readers insights into the complex Haitian diaspora experience. The novel seeks to offer a deeper view into Haitian society and covers an array of themes such as the politics of survival, resiliency, and feminist culture in Haiti. Throughout the novel, Gay is highly critical of mainstream media because of how they depict and silo Haiti as a poor and helpless country. Haiti’s historical stance on censorship is well documented, and as a Haitian writer living in America, Gay is successful in giving agency to the voiceless by chronicling the stories of the Haitian diaspora. Ayiti explores stories that explain what it is like to be a Haitian
Steven Gregory’s book entitled The Devil Behind The Mirror is an ethnographical study of the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is in the Caribbean, it occupies the Western half of an island, while Haiti makes up the Eastern portion. Gregory attempts to study and analyze the political, social and cultural aspects of this nation by interviewing and observing both the tourists and locals of two towns Boca Chica and Andres. Gregory’s research centers on globalization and the transnational processes which affect the political and socio-economics of the Dominican Republic. He focuses on the social culture, gender roles, economy, individual and nation identity, also authority and power relations. Several of the major relevant issues facing Dominican society include racism, sexism, and discrimination, economy of resort tourism, sex tourism and the informal economy. The objective of Gregory’s ethnographic research is to decipher exclusionary practices incorporated by resort tourism, how it has affected locals by division of class, gender, and race, increasing poverty and reliance on an informal economy.
The narrator's precise observations allow the reader to find insight in small moments of village life. Jewett presents a world seemingly unchanged with a mixture of remoteness and a “childish certainty of being the center of civilization” (1). The narrator's nostalgic recount of village life has about it the mood of a dream, a life remembered and not put down until long afterwards. Jewett's pictorial conventions create a feeling of impermanence akin to nostalgia assembled into long, gracefully rambled sentences authenticating her own regional style.
She repeats the phrase “Made in England” with a bitter tone to describe how it was written all over her childhood, how it “ran through every part of [her] life”, and how it represents the “greatness” of England ingrained into Antiguan society (40, 81-82). At the beginning of each paragraph, she includes slight variations of the ironic statement, “I saw England for the first time”, to duplicate the constant, powerful presence of England in her life, despite never seeing it in person, only seeing it on maps
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.
"I'd rather you shoot at tin cans in the backyard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want , if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." This is what Atticus Finch tells his children after they are given air-rifles for Christmas. Uniquely, the title of the classic novel by Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird, was taken from this passage. At first glance, one may wonder why Harper Lee decided to name her book after what seems to be a rather insignificant excerpt. After careful study, however, one begins to see that this is just another example of symbolism in the novel. Harper Lee uses symbolism rather extensively throughout this story, and much of it refers to the problems of racism in the South during the early twentieth century. Harper Lee's effective use of racial symbolism can be seen by studying various examples from the book. This includes the actions of the children, the racist whites, and the actions of Atticus Finch.
In "Bread" two children try to put their parents' house together (or perhaps take it apart) after their parents' accidental death; one seeks refuge in sarcasm and denial, while the other makes bread which will never be eaten and thinks on various kinds of "debris": the "still-smoking rubble" of his two-year marriage, the pile of clothes which has "nothing to do with how my mother wore my father's flannel shorts on Sunday to cook in..."In the stylistically innovative "Bring Your Friends to the Zoo," a couple (these are nearly always duets of longing) awkwardly try to dismantle (or remember?) their affair, while being directed by the narrator about how to move, what to see: "Once through the gate, face right.The Deer House, the Camel House ... As you face your right you see a path before you.Take it."The zoo would seem at first neutral ground, but we discover there is no neutrality, no one is the innocent bystander, the one-day tourist.In "Is Anyone Left This Time of Year?" tourism of another kind is explored when a recently widowed man visits a town where there are no more tourists, and once there, shell-shocked with grief, he merely repeats everything said to him, thus becoming an echo of his previous visits; absolutely passive, he is the compleat tourist, merely and only "seeing" the sights.
Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird takes place in Alabama during a crucial time in American history. The book is told from the point of view of Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and revolves around her and her brother Jem while they are growing up. While they are growing up, they learn many life lessons that are shown by different milestones. Lee uses many symbols in the novel to represent the maturing of Jem and Scout.
Kincaid, Jamaica. The autobiography of my mother . New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1996. Print.
One of the ways the story shows how the conflict between locals and tourists is through first impressions and stereotypes. “It’s not her fault she’s haole” (21). “She’s not one of us” (22). People in Hawai`i is seen as either a local and/or a haole. From a number of locals, they say that if a person is not from Hawai`i, then she or he is considered haole. Kahakauwil...
In the short story “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid is a story that everyone can related to. The story is about a mother telling her daughter what to do, what not to do and how to do things. Kind of like society or parents or a friends of what to do. There has also been always been expectations of what to do and how to do things in life regards of gender, nationality or religion. The male has he’s duties and the female has different duties. However, in the typical society today, a person is supposed to graduate from high school and go straight in to an Ivy League university, to get a degree in a field of study that makes lot of money. While working a person must save money for that dream big house with the white picket fence. At the same time, you have to look for that perfect spouse so you can have the big beautiful dream wedding. After the wedding it’s the romantic honeymoon to Bora Bora. After a couple years the baby comes, and you are a happy family. Typically, that is what parents teach their children of what is what is expected of them.
In part fictional and part autobiographical novel “A Small Place” published in 1988, Jamaica Kincaid offers a commentary on how the tenets of white superiority and ignorance seem to emerge naturally from white tourists. She establishes this by using the nameless “you” depicted in the story to elucidate the thoughts they have when visiting such formerly colonized islands. This inner mentality of the white tourists reveals how tourism is still a form of oppression for the natives of such formerly colonized tourists as it continues to exploit them. I will be focusing primarily on page 10 of the text to illustrate this.
“Mockingbirds do nothing for us but sing all day. That’s why it’s a sin to kill one” (103). To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee tells of a small town life, disrupted by an unfair trial of a black man accused of rape.It has many underlying points, like the children trying to meet Boo Radley and new friends in the summer. As named in the title, the mockingbird is used several times to symbolize innocence destroyed by evil, the mockingbird is an innocent animal doing nothing but singing, while the one who shoots it down is the evil one destroying all innocence. The mockingbird represents certain characters throughout the story who have been metaphorically “shot down”.
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.
Trevor Rhone's Old Story Time Today's Jamaica seems overly preoccupied with the issues of class and colour. In Old Story Time Trevor Rhone mirrors a Jamaica struggling with the same subject in the Mid Twentieth century. Discuss these concerns of the play in detail making comparisons/contrasts to the current Jamaican and Caribbean societies.