Jamaica Kincaid: Impact Of Tourism On The Small Island Of Antigua

Trask is able to use logos to prove how tourism has affected the Hawaiian culture. Trask refers to Hawaii as a “She” who “Rubs off” on the visitor with her magical presence. The beauty of Hawaii is used as an escape from “Rawness and violence” for most Americans though, Trask mentions that the land has a “Western sexual sickness” (Trask 1993). “Of course, all this hype is necessary to hide the truth about tourism, the awful exploitative truth that the industry is the major cause of environmental degradation, low wages, land dispossession, and the highest cost of living in the United States” (Trask 1993). Trask says that the areas of Hawaii which were “sacred” to the Hawaiian’s have now been turned into top of the line hotels. The beaches that were once full of fishermen and their nets are used for recreational activities like surfing getting a tan and jet skiing. On most of the beaches owned by resorts, the beaches are reserved for hotel residences only. In the essay, Trask gives the readers logos as to how tourism is changing the land. For example, thirty years ago the ratio of Hawaiians outnumbered the tourist 2:1. Today,

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 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

Daily, hundreds of thousands of people are traveling, whether it’s by plane, car, bus, boat, or foot, people are traveling to new locations and being immersed in different cultures. Many fail to realize how ignorant of a tourist they are. Kincaid explains that tourists are morally “ugly” and use other, less fortunate people, for their own amusement. She tries to enlighten those who are privileged to be more considerate when they are visiting new places. Published author Jamaica Kincaid wrote “The Ugly Tourist,” originally written in her book, A Small Place, where she tries to convince readers that tourists are, “a piece of rubbish” (207). Kincaid’s attempt to convey to the audience that tourists are ignorant and morally “ugly” is partially successful, due to her satisfactory emotional appeal, yet inability to produce a less angry tone, along with minimal logical appeal.

Jamaica Kincaid successfully convinces her audience that post colonial impact still remains. Through the use of rhetorical appeals such as pathos, logos and imagery she successfully explains her claim. Through this novel she gives an insightful explanation of what antigua is like from a person who comes from that area. Kincaid being born in antigua, she gives us a view from her eyes on what antigua is really like while going through post colonial impact. Kincaid incorporates historical background in text to convince her audience that this impact is holding back antigua from the good and enjoyable place it can really be. She develops a connection with the audience when she makes them feel like the tourist that is figuring out what's going on in the background of antigua. This connection serves as pathos as it makes the audience feel the emotion of anger and disappointment for not knowing what mess is really going on in this small island. This demonstration shows how cultures everywhere are affected by postcolonialism and how there is a negative global commonality between tourist and natives.

The reader gets a rare and exotic understanding of a totally foreign and ancient culture experiencing the growing pains of colonial expansion during the British domination

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.

Immediately the reader is made aware that Hartman is physically aware of her surroundings in Ghana, “I chose Ghana because it possessed more dungeons, prisons and slave pens than any other country in West Africa..”(Hartman 7). Hartman is physically aware of her purpose in Ghana: she is here because it contains the most physical remnants of the slave trade than most other countries in West Africa. Hartman know where she will travel while in Ghana, Elmina, Salaga, Gwolu, and she knows she will find the physical remnants of the slave trade in these places: slave forts, markets, roads and castles. Hartman finds these physical remains of slavery in Elmina, the castle that once held slaves before they entered the middle passage, Salaga, the largest slave market, and Gwolu, the wall that was used to keep slave traders away. Both Kincaid in her memoir A Small Place and Phillips in his memoir The Atlantic Sound are similar to Hartman in this way, as both possess intense awareness of their physical surroundings. Kincaids memoir, although dealing with Antigua and not Ghana, contains awareness from the perspective of a native, “Antigua is beautiful. Antigua is too beautiful. Sometimes the beauty of it seems unreal”(Kincaid 76). Kincaid additionally addresses the physical remnants of slavery in Antigua, like Hartman, “In the Antigua that I knew we lived on a street named after a maritime criminal Horatio Nelson...In the middle of High Street was the Barclays Bank… [who] were slave-traders”(Kincaid 24-26). Phillips also provides insight to the tangible pieces of slavery, when discussing

A tourist is under no obligation to know about the history of an island, city, state or country. It should be acknowledged that Kincaid displays anger at nearly every entity in Antigua, but at the same time it is her anger at tourists which seems to be the most misplaced because they are the ones who have the least power in fixing the problems the people in Antigua have.

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.

The book gives a record of an important journey of the Godwin family in which they recalled the trail of the Aborigines. It dissipates the thought that the colonial masters surveyed the land starting from scratch. Those trails, actually, framed the reason for the first foundation for the road construction in Antigua and Barbuda. It also tells about the efforts of Governor Haynes Smith to enhance the health and education services, the courts and the continuous shutting down of estate prisons as the twentieth century progressed. It talks about the steady replacement of the teachers, English midwives and different laborers in the Civil services and the state of mind of the blacks that displaced

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.

In a quaint little village tucked away on a beautiful Caribbean island, lays the seaside town of Runaway bay. A town filled with deep rooted culture on an island filled with welcoming natives. The pleasant vibes of reggae music and Rastafarian culture flow from the hills to the sandy shores. This island rich with tropical fruits and spices is located in the heart of the Greater Antilles. History tells that the enslaved island once known to its natives as “Xaymeca”, has come a long way in becoming the independent nation known today as Jamaica. In the Sea of many islands known as the West Indies, Jamaica stands peaceful, welcoming tourist and expanding rapidly. From an early age my passion for the island and its culture

From the start of “A Small Place,” the author establishes an unsettling position for the reader by using second person perspective to give the audience a personal experience, “The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being” (Kincaid, 14). The act of being the tourist in respect to Kincaid's statement is being unaware of the surroundings and people who reside in this country you refer to as a paradise. She pushes the audience out of their comfort zone to an unsettling acknowledgment of ignorance - if you have traveled and expressed these behaviors. The author presents the idea that the act of traveling with the mindset that indigenous people are benefiting is a form of self-justification rather than reality. Kincaid acknowledges the audience’s ignorance of the situation as an institutional one that educated you to have this mindset. She describes this situation the people of Antigua endured, as something you were not taught, which exonerates your oblivious demeanor toward your surroundings,

This paper explores a great number of academic research journals and databases on the impact that the tourism industry has on the countries in the Caribbean. Tourism impacts the Caribbean in three different sections. Tourism has a social impact that allows for increases in revenue, jobs, and service for the people living there. Tourism’s cultural impact allows the history and heritage of the Caribbean to be acknowledged and practiced not only here but around the world as tourists come and go. Tourism’s environmental impact effects the natural and geographical diversity that can only be found in these countries. Although tourism brings about many advantages in all three categories, there are still negatives attributes that appear from tourism that must be handled properly to maintain a successful industry. This paper examines 12 different research journals that suggest all of the positives and negatives of tourism in the Caribbean and how they can effect not only the tourism industry but the area in which they are practiced.