Antigua was trapped. Every last inch of the island was imprisoned and controlled by England. At least this was how it felt to Jamaica Kincaid, a woman who grew up on the isle. Her life was constantly being pushed around by Britain, for better or for worse. To Jamaica, it was for worse. As Kincaid reflects on her life and relationship with England, she takes steps to justify her opinions to readers. Jamaica’s use of specific rhetorical devices allows her to successfully establish and support her biting tone in this piece. Jamaica Kincaid opens on her earliest encounter with England. Traveling down memory lane, she explores her first impressions through metaphors. As a child, Britain’s “mysterious” (6) air struck her. The country was “a very …show more content…
She draws a parallel between her life before she understood Britain and her life after she had experienced its impact. Kincaid brings her readers back in time. Her use of ironic foreshadowing clarifies her bitter feelings towards England by explaining how difficult the country has made her life. Jamaica had no idea that “the word England” (112) was meant to make her “feel in awe and small” (111). She was just an innocent child at the time. The irony of the device stems from the fact that Kincaid wrote this essay as a grownup, even though the foreshadowing appears to be coming from a place of naivety. Jamaica wanted her life back. She wanted to change her situation. This longing draws attention to the examples previously mentioned in the excerpt and connects her experiences from past to present. Jamaica’s foreshadowing justifies her hostile tone by reflecting on all the different ways in which England’s presence damaged her lifestyle. Jamaica Kincaid emphasizes her feelings toward Britain by employing a strict and severe tone in her essay. Using several rhetorical strategies, she criticizes Britain’s monopoly over Antigua while pointing out examples from her past that illustrate and defend her opinions. Jamaica questions England’s appearance at first glance through her rhetoric. While she does suggest that the country can seem beautiful on the outside, her experience didn’t match up with the hype. She was
Thank you for your trust in me. Through intense deliberation I have decided. The money will be given to women suffrage, child labor and deforestation. This money allocation will better the world not only for us but the children of the future. I have decided to give $600,000 as a gift.
Michelle Cliff’s short story Down the Shore conspicuously deals with a particularly personal and specific, deeply psychological experience, in order to ultimately sub-textually create a metaphor regarding a wider issue of highly social nature. More specifically, the development of the inter-dependent themes of trauma, exploitation, as well as female vulnerability, which all in the case in question pertain to one single character, also latently extend over to the wider social issue of colonialism and its entailing negative repercussions, in this case as it applies to the Caribbean and the British Empire. The story’s explicit personal factor is developed through the literary techniques of repetition, symbolism, metaphor, as well as slightly warped albeit telling references to a distinct emotional state, while its implicit social factor is suggested via the techniques of allusion, so as to ultimately create a generally greater, undergirding metaphor.
At the beginning of the text Jamaica Kincaid is quite critical of the idea that people would come to her 11 mile wide island of Antigua. Tourists do not seem to belong in Kincaid 's small place, describing anyone who absorbs the splendor of the country without understanding the island is nothing but ugly. Kincaid describes the exploitation, enslavement along with the other horrible fates that have befallen Antigua and then creates the idea that a tourist separates the real life of an Antiguan so that they can enjoy the glorious sights that the country offers a tourist. A country left in ruins, filled with corruption and unable to become something better is the legacy that Kincaid describes post-colonial Antigua. What is left is a place that
Through the use of rhetorical elements, Kincaid, Dario, and Adichie each attempt in communicating their belief of a certain idea and perspective. In her short book, Kincaid criticizes privileged people as she reminisces her former life in Antigua. Meanwhile, through his poem, Dario expresses his belief of the differences between Americans who originate from the North and those who originate from the South. Finally, Adichie highlights the negative influences of a single story in which a story is told through a biased perspective. Ultimately, Dario and Adichie successfully open a dialogue while Kincaid is unable to effectively do so.
Although she loves her nation, she is not so ignorant as to not see the problems that have, or still reside in Antigua. A point that came back several times is that the library was never fixed. As a child, Kincaid would always be in the library reading. Reading so much in fact that she would try to hide and check out extra books than she was allowed. The library was unfortunately damaged by an earthquake, and remained damaged for decades.
These memories, despite happening years ago, are still present in many lives, represented by Hortense’s claims that she remembers being inside her mother’s womb. Though European colonization happened long before Irie was born, she still lives within a community where the effects of colonialism can be seen. For example, when the headmaster of Irie’s school praises Sir Glenard for founding the school with the intention of mixing Caribbean and English people, it is revealed, “Glenard’s influence… ran through three generations of immigrants who could feel both abandoned and hungry even when in the bosom of their family in front of a mighty feast” (255). While Glenard’s intention with the school was to unite, his history of prejudice makes the community inherently divisive. Indirectly, colonialism still affects Irie—whether through her desperate attempts to straighten her hair or even the school she attends.
After thinking, I realized that, along with Haiti, many other islands in the Caribbean had been or still were under colonization and being oppressed. The use of the word “island” here can be seen as a call to battle to all other islands in the Caribbean who are being oppressed by their colonizers. Although not immediately following the Haitian War of Independence, many of the fellow Countries that were being oppressed in the Caribbean slowly began to realize and fight for their independence. For this reason, I find the use of the word “island” in this quote very
She uses a jewel and a map as two contrasting symbols to show how the English view themselves vs. how the English really are. Kincaid says “England was a special jewel all right, and only special people could wear it” to express that although the English had colonized Antigua, they were not considered English, that the English were two opposites sides of a coin. To contrast this idea Kincaid uses the map and says “... in jungles, in deserts, on plains, on top of the highest mountains… in places where they were not welcomed, in places they should not have been” to show the harsh truth of the English colonies all over the world, to also express that the English took as much as they desired with no regards for everyone else, such as the original settlers of a territory. Jamaica Kincaid wants to cause the reader to picture a map and to understand that jungles, deserts, plains, mountains, etc. are not together naturally, they were forced to converge because of their common
Many people who take trips to other countries use it to escape the boredom of their own life and to have fun in another country. Taking vacations can provide excitement when heading to different locales, give a person the tastes and sights of a new place, and overall provide a sense of pleasure to a tourist. However, there is an aspect of this that many tourists do not get to see. In her essay A Small Place, author Jamaica Kincaid makes this aspect very clear. Kincaid, along with many other natives of foreign islands, believes that tourists are “ugly human being[s]” who seemingly feed off the boredom and desperation of the natives of a certain place, creating a source of pleasure for themselves (Kincaid 262).
Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother signifies a pivotal point in her writing style. Her earlier novels have some semblance of her personal life, but, in this novel, the protagonist Xuela does not share a common experience with that of the author’s life. The mother-obsessed protagonists of her earlier fiction are absent. Instead, we have a seventy year old half-Carib Dominican.
This is significant because the character with the biggest change only speaks twice and is barely represented in the story. The character that goes through this is the daughter figure she goes from unknowing to knowing, this was achieved through repetition. Repetition plays a very key role in this story because it reapplies it and it forces you to engage with the material again. To be honest, this story exemplifies the teaching methods of America. Jamaica formulated a strong tone, and presented it in
In Jamaica Kincaid’s essay “On Seeing England for the First Time”, she clearly voices her animosity towards the one place her whole life surrounded as a child in hopes of persuading her audience into understanding that there is a fine line between dreams and realities. As an adult, Kincaid finally is able to travel to England to witness firsthand what all the hype was about and why her childhood and education happened to be based around the fantasy customs of this country. Noticing that every detail of her life revolved around England, from the way she ate her food to the naming of her family members, Kincaid found her hatred growing more and more. Coming from a British colony, the obsession with England drove Kincaid crazy to the point that she finally traveled there one day. She says, “The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark” (37).
Kincaid’s Reason for A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid writing style, in A Small Place, makes the reader feel attacked. Her word choices also make the reader think about themselves. British colonization and its effect is the root of Kincaid 's anger. By looking through the Post-colonial, Marxists, and New Criticism literary lenses it reveals her reason of writing and it shows deeper emotions and ideas.
By doing this, it enables the reader to fathom how Antiguans view tourists from their perspective and not from the colonialist perspective. Kincaid imposes tourism in a sarcastic manner entailing from her tone, “An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this…” (17). Kincaid directly speaking to the reader, they are able to understand and acknowledge her feelings. By doing so, it evokes emotion therefore the reader feels shame and empathy. Furthermore, by using second person narration it allows the the tone to be more obvious and acknowledged by 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”
The main religious belief in the island nation of Jamaica is Christianity. In the 1790’s, George Lisle and Moses Baker, who were freed slaves, arrived in Jamaica and built a massive following in Kingston and Western Jamaica. This was a problem, however, because the African-Jamaicans of the sugar plantations were not allowed to attend school or church, and certainly not allowed to read the bible. However, this all began to change when in the 1820’s when white baptist missionaries started to flood the country. They became the teacher of the African-Jamaicans, allowing them to“no longer the only ones who had been slaves”, sharing the “Jewish experience of having been an oppressed people”.