Persuasive Analysis Of Jamaica Kincaid 's A Small Place

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

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.

Have you ever wished that someone had given you a guide on how live the right way? Jamaica Kincaid does just that in her short story, Girl. The narrative is presented as a set of life instructions to a girl by her mother to live properly in Antigua in the 1980’s. While the setting of the story is not expressly stated by the author in the narrative, the reader is able to understand the culture for which Girl was written.

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.

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.

Repetition is used numerous times in the novel to further depict Kincaid’s thoughts and ideas. By using repetition, the author is portraying the thought as a rant as well as in a more aggressive and serious tone. This is displayed in the novel when Kincaid says “...maybe they weren’t from the real England at all but from another England, one we were not familiar with, not at all from the England we were told about…”. In this quote, Kincaid is repeating word England in order to further emphasize how god-like England is. Kincaid is expressing how England is a place that is not within their reach and that it is placed only for the chosen ones. Kincaid expresses these thoughts in her initial reaction to the atrocious behavior of the Europeans. This quote also displays the effect of colonization on people like Kincaid. The shock that Kincaid experienced is proof that she thought very highly of the Europeans and was dismayed as soon as she found out about who they truly are. During the time of colonization, everyone was made to believe how close to God Europeans are and were forced to acknowledge how superior they were compared to them. Another quote that demonstrated the use of rhetorical questions is when Kincaid says “Antigua is a small place. Antigua is a very small place. In Antigua, not only is the event turned into every day, but the everyday is turned into an event”. In the quote, the phrase that is being repeated is “Antigua is a small place”. In this quote, Kincaid is trying to emphasize the fact that Antigua is a small place compared to the rest of the world. By saying small place, Kincaid was not only trying to convey how small Antigua is based on its land but as well as

In “A Small Place” by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid explicitly describes the effects and consequences that imperialism had on Antigua, while implicitly condemning imperialism for the effects and consequences indigenous people endured through allegory. Examining the results of imperialism in a cultural aspect provides a deeper connection for the audience to fathom the struggle people of Antigua experienced. Kincaid illustrates herself as the main protagonist who directly speaks to the audience as if they are the ignorant tourist. Through the utilization of the second person perspective, she immerses the reader emotionally, which through the experience proves to be more captivating.