Examples Of Symbolism In A Small Place

A Small Place: Antigua’s Deprecating Dependency Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place explores the blissful ignorance that tourists possess as they visit Antigua without knowing its history which earns them an unfavorable reputation among the locals. The ugliness of tourism within the novel is characterized by the quick turnaround of tourists that only explore a surface level understanding of the island before leaving. Through the narrator’s abrupt but subtle use of interjections, such as noting the tourists’ ugliness or ignorance in a conversational tone, and a figurative ‘tour’ through Antigua’s history, Kincaid dissects the tourist’s perspective of the island, allowing for them to shed their original viewpoint and perceive the island for what

Here is where the narrator utilizes the key element of parenthesized interjections which display a different, more casual tone that allows the point to come across clearer and more blunt. Kincaid describes the locals laughing at the tourists and then interjects by stating that they are being made fun of because they do not go about traditional/cultural things native to Antigua in a normal looking manner. This is where the purest contrast between the two occurs, allowing us to examine the ‘ignorant versus resentful’ aspect of their relationship that displays the deterioration of the island’s unique cultural identity as it is dependent on the tourism industry. After this parenthesized explanation, the passage continues to simply say “I do not like you,” due to the tourists’ superficial lifestyle presenting a clear tension in the relationship between the two. We can utilize this passage as a lens for viewing the tense relationship between the two parties and how they interact with each other throughout the remainder of the

The influx of tourism provides the money that Antigua desperately needs but not enough for it to survive independently. Antigua stays in a constant state of poverty due to the corruption present where a woman has power because of “her relationship with this high government official,” (Kincaid 12) and is able to amass property and a say in cabinet meetings along with the corruption where one of the richest people in Antigua is a “drug smuggler [who] is so rich people say he buys cars in tens…” (Kincaid 11). When the government of a poor, independent state is corrupt, there is little room for that state to flourish economically without an intervention of some other state. We can see that the last thing Antiguans want is more tourists due to the consumer lifestyle that they bring to the island, but it is the one factor that they need, dooming them to a cycle of barely surviving economically while ignorance plagues the land they call