A General History of the Caribbean
When one undertakes an historical study, any success in the undertaking is arguably predicated on an understanding of the subject to be studied. Knowing the culture of a given people or region, the geography and climate of its habitation, the attitudes of the people and their current political comportment – all of these breathe life into the subject. It is this deepening familiarization that gives life to the historical figures and events of that subject.
Perhaps nowhere is this preliminary requirement more necessary than when undertaking an historical study of the Caribbean islands. This archipelago of fifty small to moderate sized inhabited units that span a coarse 2,500 mile arc above the north side of Central and South America represent a very similar and yet very diverse group of people and cultures. Sharing a common climate, they contain a variety of terrain. Subjected to European invasion and conquest, then populated involuntarily by black African slaves under an oppressively dominating plantation system, the dissimilar timing of these very common circumstances lead to a curious variety of cultures. Conversely, the many languages spoken and the several cultural manifestations that are apparent in this region do not obliterate an essentially consistent ambience, a common rhythm that is unmistakably Caribbean. It is this contradiction, this sameness and yet difference, that makes a vigorous introductory approach such a compelling and, in itself, such a diversified component of this historical study.
Even more important than the natural lure of anthropological or sociological considerations in their own right is the insufficiency of chronological political events alone to frame a general history of the Caribbean. Unlike many regions that experience clear, defining events and forces in a more or less cohesive fashion, periodization is difficult to construct for Caribbean history. Some pivotal events were confined to the particular island on which they occurred, while others had a regional impact. Furthermore, these latter sometimes did so with the uneven yet certain rhythm of the waves that come across the sea to lap the shores of the receptive neighboring island. This tendency yields a certain proclivity towards eclectic explanatory approaches.
Three different yet mutually supportive approaches illustrate the utility of this eclecticism. The Caribbeanist Sidney Mintz employs the analytical approach of a social scientist to identify conditions of common description in his article "the Caribbean as a Socio-Cultural Area". Antonio Benitez-Rojo injects a decidedly cultural emphasis to his historical narrative of the region in his chapter "From the plantation to the Plantation", taken from his book The Repeating Island.
Billy has many regrets in the story but there are 3 regrets that really trouble him a lot. The first is the death of Ronald Weary. Billy is in a huge battle and falls next to a tree where Weary helps him only to receive credit for the rescue. When Weary arrives the Germans spot them and they become prisoners of war they are put on a train and sent to a prison. While Weary is on the train he develops a deadly disease in his foot which consequently kills him. “There was death on the ninth day in the car ahead of Billy’s too. Ronald weary died of gangrene that had started in his mangles feet. So it goes. Weary in his nearly continuous delirium told of the three musketeers acknowledged that he was dying, gave many messages to be delivered to his family in Pittsburg. Above all, he wanted to be avenged, so he said again and again the name of the person who had killed him. Everyone on the car learned the lesson well. Who killed me he would ask. And everybody knew the answer which was this Billy Pilgrim.” The next thing Billy regrets is going on an airplane that is headed to an optometry convention. He knows it is going to crash because of his ability to time travel yet, he still gets on the plane so he doesn’t make a fool out of himself. He survives the plane crash and wakes up in the hospital. “Billy pilgrim got on a chartered airplane 25 years after that. He knew it was going to crash but he didn’t want to make a fool of himself by saying so.” After the plane ...
...t or the future. With this information, Billy begins to learn about the future. “I, Billy Pilgrim will die, have died, and will always die on February thirteenth, 1976.” Billy is in fact right with this prediction. Realizing everything is planned out, Billy ends his search for meaning. He understands that he can do nothing to stop the senseless acts, which take place. Like the Tralfamadores, he must try to concentrate on the good moments and not on the bad ones. He could do nothing to stop them or to change them.
to it because his fate did not lead him there. Billy applied the fact that he had to accept
Billy has no control over his being in a time warp. In the midst of his life in New York he will suddenly find himself Tralfamadore; he has become "unstuck in time" ( 22). The Tralfamadorians eventually show Billy the important moments of his life, but they do not always show them in sequence. They do this so Billy can fully understand the true reasons for and the importance of the events.
Billy is also traumatized by the extreme loss in his life. Everywhere he looks, he experiences great loss. First his father dies in a hunting accident, then he gets in a plane crash and everyone aboard dies but him, and while he is in the hospital recuperating, his wife dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. There is so much death surrounding his life, that it is no wonder Billy has not tried to kill himself yet.
15. Burton, Richard D.E. Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition and Play in the Caribbean. (1997). Cornell University Press.
Because he cannot control time travel, Billy is forced to relive again and again some of the most painful parts of his life. For example, Edgar Derby, his wartime father-figure, is senselessly executed by the Germans for stealing a teapot, while Valencia Pilgrim, his own wife, dies accidentally from carbon monoxide poisoning after her car's exhaust system is damaged in an accident. Barbara Greeley has observed that the effect of having to witness these events over and over is that "Billy becomes emotionally desensitized to human suffering and death, and is thus robbed of compassion" (3). Her point is well taken, for without this human emotion Billy is reduced to the level of an unfeeling machine. On the planet Tralfamadore where Billy is taken after he is kidnapped by extraterrestrials, his machine-like response to suffering and death grows only worse.
To begin, college is not worth its cost due to the economic burdens it places on college graduates. Students put themselves in debt with students loans necessary to pay for their education while also watching their wages decline over recent years(Doc C). This creates a lifelong cycle of
...d issues of post-colonialism in Crossing the Mangrove. It is clear that Conde favors multiplicity when it comes to ideas of language, narrative, culture, and identity. The notion that anything can be understood through one, objective lens is destroyed through her practice of intertextuality, her crafting of one character's story through multiple perspectives, and her use of the motif of trees and roots. In the end, everything – the literary canon, Creole identity, narrative – is jumbled, chaotic, and rhizomic; in general, any attempts at decryption require the employment of multiple (aforementioned) methodologies.
Billy Pilgrim develops his own Tralfamadorian belief to explain all the deaths of the innocent people during the bombing of Dresden. During his daughters wedding a long time after the war Billy is abducted by aliens and taken to their plant of Tralfamadore. While there Billy learns of the alien’s philosophy of time and death. Billy realizes that this philosophy echoes his own feelings. To the Tralfamadorians time is constant not a linear progression of events, they explain, “All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist” (Vonnegut 34). He turns to this belief to convince himself that these deaths were supposed to happen and there is nothing he or anyone could have done to stop them, what was going to occur had
Green, Cencilia. (1997). Historical Roots of Modern Caribbean Politics. Against the Current. Vol. 12, (4), 34-38.
Rouse. "Hispaniola: Caribbean Chiefdoms in the Age of Columbus." Google Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.
societies to reexamine their view of the Caribbean. In this paper the following topics in The
Set in St. Lucia, Walcott’s Omeros reveals an island possessing a rich past. St. Lucia, a former colony, has a history of ‘pagan’ religion and tradition, a different language, and an economic background based namely on fishing. Locals must try to reconcile their heritage prior to colonization, the influences of colonization, and how to create a new culture from the ashes of the others (Hogan 17).
The quote room A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid describes the concept of being reveals the consequences of colonialism and globalization. Colonialism and Globalization result in the westerners inability to see the land as belonging to someone else, and seeing it as their source for pleasure and reconstruction.