Monday, April 8, 2013

A Small Place

1. Is this essay a message or a rant?

2. What was Kincaid's attitude towards everyone?

3. Am I really to blame for what happened to her country?

2) I will be touching on the first two questions. In her essay, Kincaid mentions the effects that have taken place from tourists visiting her home country of Antigua. Starting off, the essay doesn't really feel like its going in any specific direction. Its felt that she was just talking about tourism. One you get to the second half, you feel the actual bitterness she feels. And once you get through it and reread the entire piece, you start to read between her word in the first half and realize the bitterness was always there. I feel as though Kincaid took a very aggressive stance in her work. She feels that it's everyone's fault that her country is the way it is. She blames tourism and just colonialism as a whole. It makes it seem like this is more of a rant than an actual informative piece. She takes a very "me me me" approach and that might turn people away. But in a way, I started to look at it from her perspective. Sure colonialism existed throughout history and that her native country isn't the only one that went through it but when we think of colonialism we think of back in the 1700's  during our histories own experiences with it. People don't realize that for Kincaid, colonialism was a part of her life all the way until 1981, when Antigua finally did gain their independence. So in a way I can see why she can be so bitter. For her, it might not be "why did I have to grown up that way" but actually "why did WE (her country as a whole) have to grown up that way". It it might not be a complete rant but just to get it off her chest and maybe inform people that colonialism isn't just in everyone's past but it was also many people's present.

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