A Small Place Analysis

Gentle waves, lush greenery, and sun-soaked beaches, Antigua embodies your ideal holiday destination. But Jamaica Kincaid turns your paradise upside down in her new memoir A Small Place. Using her pen as a sword, Kincaid slashes Antigua’s façade of perfection into shreds and presses the blade against the throats of tourism, colonialism and corruption.

A Small Place, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid, is a story relating to the small country of Antigua and its dilemmas from Jamaica Kincaid’s point of view. In this novel Kincaid is trying to inform her audience that Antigua is in a poor state due to British imperial, government corruption, and tourism. Kincaid exposes her audience to the effect of these very problems in Antigua by using persuasive visual language. In the third part of Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, Kincaid does an exceptional job in arguing that, her country Antigua has corrupt government officials due to British influence by appealing effectively to pathos, logos, and ethos.

It’s hard to imagine someone’s personal experience without actually being the one enduring it; however, Jamaica Kincaid’s use of language contests other wise.Through intense imagery and emotional response, Jamaica Kincaid utilizes rhetorical appeals such as logos, pathos, and ethos, which successfully convinces her audience by creating a conversation between herself and the reader. Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is an expression of her inner feelings on the transformation her hometown, Antigua, and the everlasting postcolonial impact that occurs. Kincaid reacts to the feelings she had as a young girl and compares that mindset to the opinions she holds today as an adult. Kincaid’s piece evaluates the foreignness, race, and power that consumes Antigua. While she descriptively explains the circumstances she faced in Antigua, Kincaid incorporates historical background which provides logical support to her purpose. Notably, the author’s first hand experiences gives her credibility, ethos, and allows the audience to clearly understand the context from her perspective. Not only does Kincaid effectively describe her experiences, but she also makes her audience feel as though they are looking through her eyes. Her purpose demonstrates the difficulty and impossibility of returning to origin after crucial influences. A Small Place proves that the effects of racism and racial inequality are long term and culture cannot simply return exactly how it once was in that specific culture,

Our Town is a play that takes place near the turn of the century in the small rural town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire. The playwright, Thornton Wilder is trying to convey the importance of the little, often unnoticed things in life. Throughout the first two acts he builds a scenario, which allows the third act to show that we as humans often run through life oblivious to what is actually happening. Wilder attempts to show life as something that we take for granted. We do not realize the true value of living until we are dead and gone. The through-line of the action seems to be attention to the details of life. Wilder builds up a plot that pays attention to great details of living.

She feels that the Britishers showed their power everywhere and did not do anything that benefitted the Antiguans. For example, a library which was very near and dear to the author was not well-maintained by colonialists. She mentions in her book that there is a sign that says, “REPAIRS ARE PENDING” (Kincaid 9), and how there has been nothing done to repair the building. As the government was very corrupt, they were caring for themselves. Kincaid also mentions that due to racial segregation, she was very stressed and mentally weak. She describes how the natives should be treated equally without any racial discrimination and desires to be a tourist. She mentions, “Every native would like to find a way out… every native would like a tour”(Kincaid 18). This quote explains on how the natives will never get the feeling of being free, how they will never sense the feeling of luxury, and how they will always be in poverty. Jamaica Kincaid reveals that she lacks an actual culture to live up to. She always says that the English ruined it for her. As Hirsh and Schweitzer wrote, “Kincaid lacks a real homeland”. Kincaid also writes about the reason she changed her name, was wanting to express her cultural identity. In an interview with Hirsh and Schweitzer, she said that she renamed herself “Jamaica Kincaid”, because it suggested her West Indian

In Jamaica Kincaid essay “On Seeing England for the First Time” conveys the contradiction of a young Antiguan women’s bitterness in her perspectives of learning about England versus exactly experiencing England. Furthermore, Kincaid presents the speaker’s voice as consistently bitter from the beginning by using subjective and sarcastic diction and convincing syntax.

Kincaid, Jamaica.“Girl”. In The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 541-542. Print.

Elaine Potter Richardson, more famously known as Jamaica Kincaid, is recognized for her writings that suggest depictions of relationships between families, mainly between a mother and daughter, and her birth place, Antigua, an island located in the West Indies. She is also familiarized with Afrocentrism and feminist point of views. Kincaid’s work is filled heavily with visual imagery that produces a mental picture in readers that helps them connect stronger to the reading. An example of this really shines through in her short story piece, “Girl.” This short story describes the life of a lower class woman living in the West Indies, and also incorporates thick detailing between the relationship between her and her mother. Jamaica Kincaid structures the story as if her mother is speaking to her. She writes broad, but straight to the point, allowing readers to imagine to picture her experience. Kincaid uses visual imagery and repetition consistently throughout “Girl” to reveal the theme and tone of the story; conflictual affair between a mother and daughter.

The effect of imperialism on small colonies is sometimes intrusive and constrained. Jamaica Kincaid devotes her essay, Seeing England for the First Time, to her profound mysticism she has towards England as she grows up on the island of Antigua before it becomes an independent country. With descriptive language, Kincaid reveals her frustration for England within the classroom and at her home through use of imagery and satire.

Now, many of these banking groups are owned by foreign investors, despite attempted safeguards. This ownership has provided investors leverage and influence over the actions of the government because the government owes an exorbitant amount to these banks (Daniel Lederman). The same argument can be made about the United States’ government. This influence can be seen across the board as many decisions now seem to favor only a select few, forgetting about the ramifications for the many.

In her essay “Lack, Part Two”, Jamaica Kincaid recounts her childhood experiences living in Antigua and how those experiences affected her life. She begins by focusing on the various things she did not have, such as electricity, plumbing, cars, and doctors, and how the absence of those things made life more difficult for her. For example, she describes how she contracted various illnesses, including typhoid fever, and almost died from them.

Yet an explicit affirmation of this hatred is not necessary; the reader is quick to appreciate the irony and utter absurdity of her situation and that of Antigua. Kincaid makes us want to condemn the imperialistic attitudes which fostered this indoctrination of English values and also the supposition that this culture was somehow inherently superior to any other. By putting her readers in her own position, and by appealing to their sense of the absurd, Kincaid is very effectively able to elicit sympathy.

Antigua is a small island that was discovered in 1493, by Christopher Columbus. The natives that lived there were made slaves by the British and the economy thrived on producing sugar. In 1834 the British abolished slavery giving Antigua its independence. The sugar industry was failing so the economy relied on tourism. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid is about Antigua. Kincaid narrates her novel in second person, blaming the tourists for ruining the culture of Antigua. Kincaid explains that the British were cruel to the Antiguan people but she forgives them for it. Kincaid also talked about how the Government is currently corrupt and how beautiful Antigua’s land is. Kincaids novel is broken up into four parts that address all of these issues in Antigua.The way A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid was written is effective in the way that it tries to persuade and inform the readers.

Hello my fellow classmates I hope you are all having a wonderful morning. I want to welcome you to another session of our speech 1315 class. I had the pleasure of getting to know my partner, Rita Barraza. Today I will introduce to you what I’ve learned about this wonderful person. Waking up this morning I’m sure all of you had a chance to look around a little bit. Smelled a little bit of fresh sand. Because it’s used everywhere in El Paso. Now there’s no science to this but depending on the time you woke up the perception of the sky was different. If you woke up early enough perhaps you saw the first strike of light beaming from the horizon. Although if you haven’t had your cup of coffee yet, your day hasn’t even started. At this time, I would

Within the novel, The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the author provides many strengths that can be depicted very strongly throughout it. The first one to which comes to appear almost in every chapter is the exposure of financial institutions that include the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) (Hamann, 12). These are the major financial institutions that have a great impact still to this day of how loans and currency exchanges are dealt