A Small Place Essay

British colonization is what led to the corruption of Antigua and society through the eyes of Jamaica Kincaid. The book shows the significance of the arrival of outside countries and people and the effect it had on Caribbean islands. Through Kincaid’s various views throughout the book, perspectives range from viewpoints of tourists traveling to the Caribbean to viewing society through the eyes of Antiguan natives; even through the eyes of Jamaica Kincaid herself as a young child during the colonization periods. Kincaid’s sour tone throughout the text shows her passion for her home country and its history as she feels Antigua has been and is corrupted by the outside presence of other nations. A majority of A Small Place is expressed through Kincaid’s personal point of view and, consequently, is written in the first-person. However, she tends to write in the second-person point of view when she’s referring to tourists and even early English colonists. Her constant use of “you” in her writing makes her claims more personal and strong in distinguishing the dislike for what the tourists represent. Her tone even gets more aggressive at times. “Do you ever try to understand why people like me cannot get over the past, cannot forgive and cannot forget? There is the Barclay’s Bank. The Barclay brothers are dead. The human beings they traded, the human beings who to them were only commodities, are dead.” (Kincaid 27) Her claims towards the tourists are to show the reality of the natives as she believes they are part of what makes up the “small place” of Antigua. Kincaid’s interesting style of writing by constantly switching from one point of view to another makes the novel very convincing of her views and her argument in which she sees the tourists and outsiders as selfish towards the lives of Antiguan's. Kincaid constantly expresses how small of a place Antigua is. Jamaica Kincaid notes that “not only is the event turned into everyday, but the everyday is turned into an event.” (Kincaid p.56) Through her frequent use of “small place” in the text, she is putting a focus on the corruption of Antigua’s society. In being such a “small place”, she feels that Antigua must turn to the little things in their society to establish themselves against bigger places in the world. She targets the tourists coming into Antigua because it reminds her of the past colonization of the English as it’s history was enforced among the Antiguan’s. Additionally, due to early English colonization, Kincaid is bitter of the tourists and outsiders as she feels that Antigua has no true identity of its own. Kincaid wastes no time expressing her feelings for the tourists arriving in her home of Antigua. “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 and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness.” (Kincaid 17) For the author, English colonization is to blame for the present corruption Antigua seems to face throughout the years with problems adapted from the English such as drug dealing and prostitution; practiced now by Antiguan government officials. As a child, Kincaid reflects on the past of British colonization in Antigua as the beginning of corruption. “They should never have left their home, their precious England, a place they loved so much, a place they had to leave but could never forget. And so everywhere they went they turned it into England; and everybody they met they turned English . But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who did not look exactly like them would ever be English, so that you can imagine the destruction of people and land that came from that.” (Kincaid 24) Kincaid is upset that Antiguans live in an English culture with the fact that they are not English. She claims most Antiguan’s have been influenced by and adapted to the ways of the English because they can only express themselves through the ways of those who enslaved them. "All masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted…” “Eventually the slaves of Antigua were freed, in a kind of way.” “Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings.” (Kincaid 80-81) In reflecting on her experiences shared dealing with the history of Antigua and her childhood, Kincaid realizes that the colonization of the English resulting in corruption of government officials and of society disgraces the people of Antigua. As a result, the culture and lifestyle of Antigua is what ultimately attracts tourists to come to the small island of corruption and trouble. A Small Place effectively portrays the purpose of the novel as it shows the influence of other nations on islands in the Caribbean through tourist admiration of corrupted societies.