Monica Korb [Delete John Smith and put your name here]
COM 101—Spring 2015
A Small Place Essay Jamaica Kincaid’s memoir, A Small Place, offers an instructive example for understanding how a reality can differ greatly between people relative to their point of observation. Kincaid explains her experience of Antigua as both a “paradise” and a “prison.” It is because of this dual reality that Kincaid expresses a conflicted sense of life. She also mentions how one’s landscape is a reflection of oneself. This idea influences the divided experience of self Kincaid feels from living on the island of Antigua. While the nature of everyday life for her and those living on the island are divided from those visiting the island, they are still inherently …show more content…
Lush with vegetation and character, it is considered a desirable tourist destination. The rich, blue sky, intense colors, and sea are described by Kincaid to be “unreal.” This almost too perfect to be believable scenery is thought of as a theatrical stage for the lives of those on the island. However, the landscape’s beauty is the only resource determining the lives of those living there. No part of the landscape can make the island wealthy in a material sense. This makes the inhabitants and the beauty what attracts the tourists most and it makes them belong to the landscape more than the landscape could ever belong to them. The conflict with the beauty of the island is the simple fact of it being all tourists care to see. Kincaid describes how it seems as though tourists romanticize poverty. The decrepit buildings and lack of hygiene have become part of the scenery. This misunderstanding of the culture prevents tourists from truly knowing the place they are visiting. Kincaid, therefore, describes tourism as morally ugly. She finds it displeasing how people could use poorer people for their pleasure and how they could exploit others to escape from their boring, ordinary life. It is this naivety that connects the lives of the natives and the tourists and blends the island’s prison and paradise …show more content…
Unlike tourists, she uses books to escape the frustration and boredom of her everyday life. Her hatred of tourists is focused on their willful ignorance that is required of them to be able to enjoy themselves in such a poor place. Her personal divide among the other natives of the land lies within her being one of the few that has these strong feelings of outrage toward the people that are pretending Antigua is a vacation spot. She also has a divide with the people of her land in that she cannot forgive and forget the corrupted events of the past that brought Antigua to the state it is presently. Kincaid says the Antiguans have a distorted perspective of their lives. Major events are reduced to the same severity as everyday occurrences. They have no sense of how extraordinary the occurrence of their emancipation was and have therefore obscured the importance of it. Not everyone shares her deep attachment and personal identification with her home.
The lack of unity among the natives is most likely sourced from the lack of communication between them and the distortions that colonialism has created. They express themselves in the language of those that enslaved them and they cannot identify racism. They know of all the corruption and abuse of power but choose to ignore it. This detached view of the government has lead to the decline in education and
COM 101—Spring 2015
A Small Place Essay Jamaica Kincaid’s memoir, A Small Place, offers an instructive example for understanding how a reality can differ greatly between people relative to their point of observation. Kincaid explains her experience of Antigua as both a “paradise” and a “prison.” It is because of this dual reality that Kincaid expresses a conflicted sense of life. She also mentions how one’s landscape is a reflection of oneself. This idea influences the divided experience of self Kincaid feels from living on the island of Antigua. While the nature of everyday life for her and those living on the island are divided from those visiting the island, they are still inherently …show more content…
Lush with vegetation and character, it is considered a desirable tourist destination. The rich, blue sky, intense colors, and sea are described by Kincaid to be “unreal.” This almost too perfect to be believable scenery is thought of as a theatrical stage for the lives of those on the island. However, the landscape’s beauty is the only resource determining the lives of those living there. No part of the landscape can make the island wealthy in a material sense. This makes the inhabitants and the beauty what attracts the tourists most and it makes them belong to the landscape more than the landscape could ever belong to them. The conflict with the beauty of the island is the simple fact of it being all tourists care to see. Kincaid describes how it seems as though tourists romanticize poverty. The decrepit buildings and lack of hygiene have become part of the scenery. This misunderstanding of the culture prevents tourists from truly knowing the place they are visiting. Kincaid, therefore, describes tourism as morally ugly. She finds it displeasing how people could use poorer people for their pleasure and how they could exploit others to escape from their boring, ordinary life. It is this naivety that connects the lives of the natives and the tourists and blends the island’s prison and paradise …show more content…
Unlike tourists, she uses books to escape the frustration and boredom of her everyday life. Her hatred of tourists is focused on their willful ignorance that is required of them to be able to enjoy themselves in such a poor place. Her personal divide among the other natives of the land lies within her being one of the few that has these strong feelings of outrage toward the people that are pretending Antigua is a vacation spot. She also has a divide with the people of her land in that she cannot forgive and forget the corrupted events of the past that brought Antigua to the state it is presently. Kincaid says the Antiguans have a distorted perspective of their lives. Major events are reduced to the same severity as everyday occurrences. They have no sense of how extraordinary the occurrence of their emancipation was and have therefore obscured the importance of it. Not everyone shares her deep attachment and personal identification with her home.
The lack of unity among the natives is most likely sourced from the lack of communication between them and the distortions that colonialism has created. They express themselves in the language of those that enslaved them and they cannot identify racism. They know of all the corruption and abuse of power but choose to ignore it. This detached view of the government has lead to the decline in education and