Jamaica Kincaid'scrutinize In A Small Place Imperialism
Jamaica Kincaid’s amplifying, scrutinizing account of a nine-by-twelve mile area in A Small Place serves its purpose as a soundboard for dilemmas that expand beyond a sector of the world called Antigua. Depleted of history and filled with yachts instead of solidary culture, Antigua becomes a subscriber to an ideology that it has never signed up for. Kincaid’s notion of imperialism is a one-way game. Its only purpose is to identify those who cheat. There are no bishops, knights, or rooks, but a winning queen and her pawns.
A Small Place begins with the standard tourist on holiday. A creature conceived of cold days and sinewy stretches of clouded skies, the tourist is immediately enthralled by how exotic Antigua is –– how warm and sunny and pleasant-looking. Yet the seemingly harmless escapist nature of the tourist reveals itself to be a moral monster:
… 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. They [the natives] are not responsible for what you have; you owe them nothing; in …show more content…
By this discourse, the tourist shifts to an untrusted figure of commemorated dominance, of a profile representing a system in which unwanted history remains deleted; a “Ghost of Imperialism Past”. Tourism, then, proves to be the byproduct of imperialism, stamped with a lacking obligation to comprehend one’s individual and collective influences. This brilliantly brands the tourist of A Small Place. They may wonder why a shiny unreality like Antigua came to be, but as they revel in its crystal waters and steamed lobsters they soon forget –– as if they ever sought out to remember –– why the very natives who greeted them into their splendor are too poor, too devoid of the monetary or cultural funds, to escape a reality far colder than that of America (or even worse,
A Small Place begins with the standard tourist on holiday. A creature conceived of cold days and sinewy stretches of clouded skies, the tourist is immediately enthralled by how exotic Antigua is –– how warm and sunny and pleasant-looking. Yet the seemingly harmless escapist nature of the tourist reveals itself to be a moral monster:
… 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. They [the natives] are not responsible for what you have; you owe them nothing; in …show more content…
By this discourse, the tourist shifts to an untrusted figure of commemorated dominance, of a profile representing a system in which unwanted history remains deleted; a “Ghost of Imperialism Past”. Tourism, then, proves to be the byproduct of imperialism, stamped with a lacking obligation to comprehend one’s individual and collective influences. This brilliantly brands the tourist of A Small Place. They may wonder why a shiny unreality like Antigua came to be, but as they revel in its crystal waters and steamed lobsters they soon forget –– as if they ever sought out to remember –– why the very natives who greeted them into their splendor are too poor, too devoid of the monetary or cultural funds, to escape a reality far colder than that of America (or even worse,