Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place is a work of creative non-fiction that does not fit squarely into one literary category. This makes the task of evaluating the works effectiveness more complex. To determine the books effectiveness, it is first necessary to establish a benchmark with which the book can be measured against. A Small Place combines elements of an autobiography with elements of a social critique and exists within the vast framework of travel literature. Measuring A Small Place against these three benchmarks reveals that the work is deceptively disguised to deliver a specific message. Kincaid’s work, often critical of the tourist, is ineffective as a typical travel broacher, or work of travel literature. However, it is successful …show more content…
The work is outwardly aggressive towards the typical tourist equating them to trash. Kincaid does not stop here, her critique of the tourist is present not only in this description, but also in the parenthetical direct address to the reader. While the narrative tone shifts throughout, these parenthetical jabs persistently convey a confrontational and abrasive tone and are present throughout the work. If the goal of the piece is to inform and entice tourists, the use of this tone makes the work largely ineffective; however, this tone does allow for a more effective social …show more content…
And might not knowing why they are the way they are, why they do the things they do, why they live the way they live and in the place they live, why the things that happen to them happened, lead these people to a different relationship with the world, a more demanding relationship, a relationship in which they are not victims all the time of every bad idea that flits across the mind of the world?” (Kincaid
Both Helen Maria Williams and Lady Morgan are important representatives of the genre of Romantic travel literature. These two accounts were published more than twenty years apart, and while they regard different countries, thematic and stylistic parallels and contrasts can, not surprisingly, be established between the two works. Social and cultural commentary, as well political and historical criticism, are prominent in these two accounts. Another point of comparison is the theme of the relation of man with nature. Williams' style leans toward the sentimental tradition in travel writing; it is personalized and her perceptions tend to be mediated through the emotions. Lady Morgan's descriptions rely more on intellectual rather than emotional elements, and are often polemical, while also remaining self-consciously subjective.
Author, Bill Bryson, of “from Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe,” praises the admirable way of life in Luxembourg. Bryson’s purpose is to compare the United States to Luxembourg and to shape the idea that the country is intriguingly different. He creates a casual tone in order to appeal to friendly and adventurous adults. Bryson emphasizes his purpose and generates an entertaining literature piece, by using a variety of rhetorical devices: hyperbole, simile, anaphora, and style.
In the short story, "Girl," by Jamaica Kincaid, the character of the mother can be seen as tyrannical. This oppressive trait of hers is reiterated several times throughout this story. It is first displayed in her initial remarks, rather than asking her daughter to do things, she lists things in a robotic manner, "Wash the white clothes on Monday, wash the colored clothes on Tuesday." Not only is she robotic, but she appears to believe that she has been sent to save her daughter from promiscuity. Her narcissistic viewpoint of being a savior is one that is consistent with that of a tyrant. This perspective is evident through commands such as "try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming." She abuses her parental power
Anne Taylor's The Accidental Tourist, set in the late twentieth century United States, explores the belief that the loss and suffering of kids is the force behind other losses. Taylor is able to illustrate the exponential amount of her main character's development following the death of his son and the loss of his marriage. The loss of the main character's child illustrates the continuous struggle to discover oneself and repair one's life after a tragedy. Taylor's ability to depict the return of those broken by the world allows one to reflect on their internal happiness. Macon Leary is a middle-aged man who is a writer of a series of guidebooks called The Accidental Tourist that teaches businesspersons how to travel without leaving the comfort of their own homes.
Of the lessons of this course, the distinction made between story and situation will be the most important legacy in my writing. I learned a great travel essay cannot be merely its situation: its place, time, and action. It requires a story, the reader’s internal “journey of discovery.” While the importance of establishing home, of balancing summary and scene, and other lessons impacted my writing, this assertion at least in my estimation the core argument of the course.
In "Bread" two children try to put their parents' house together (or perhaps take it apart) after their parents' accidental death; one seeks refuge in sarcasm and denial, while the other makes bread which will never be eaten and thinks on various kinds of "debris": the "still-smoking rubble" of his two-year marriage, the pile of clothes which has "nothing to do with how my mother wore my father's flannel shorts on Sunday to cook in..."In the stylistically innovative "Bring Your Friends to the Zoo," a couple (these are nearly always duets of longing) awkwardly try to dismantle (or remember?) their affair, while being directed by the narrator about how to move, what to see: "Once through the gate, face right.The Deer House, the Camel House ... As you face your right you see a path before you.Take it."The zoo would seem at first neutral ground, but we discover there is no neutrality, no one is the innocent bystander, the one-day tourist.In "Is Anyone Left This Time of Year?" tourism of another kind is explored when a recently widowed man visits a town where there are no more tourists, and once there, shell-shocked with grief, he merely repeats everything said to him, thus becoming an echo of his previous visits; absolutely passive, he is the compleat tourist, merely and only "seeing" the sights.
In the poem Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid illustrates a conversation between a mother and her daughter, presumably Kincaid and her mother. The mother provides her daughter a series of what to do’s and what not to do’s in just one sentence. “…be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know…” the mother requests in the poem. The poem is more of Kincaid’s mother stating “this is how” and less showing her how to precisely do them. Kincaid’s mother feeds her an abundance of tasks and warnings in hopes of molding her into a proper young lady. The path to growing up can be complex. No wonder Kincaid’s mother is so concerned with Kincaid’s coming of age. She tries to teach Kincaid as much as she is able to using everything she has learned throughout her life, hoping that this would help her daughter as she faces real life. Jamaica Kincaid displays the complex process of growing up.
A lot of tourists would not think that they are offending the native residents when they travel. In the article, “The Ugly Tourist” excerpt from Jamaica Kincaid’s book, Small Place, she argues that when one is in a state of being a tourist, one does not know the depth of the place and only sees what one wants to see. Kincaid gives a strong idea of what she is arguing when she described a tourist as “an ugly human being.” She presents the emotional conflicts between tourist and the natives by evaluating their different lifestyles.
Mastery of the material an author writes about is not merely enough to get one’s point across, yet Butor uses his mastery of how to travel wherever you are in life and, in addition, uses language that presents the picture in such a manner that one does not have to delve deep into the meaning behind the words to retain the full idea portrayed in them. The higher arching purpose to his work, though, turns out to be the overall connection of ties between the book and travel ultimately depends on the book’s “literariness” to determine what journey one might have while reading (83). All in all, the tone of voice and writing style that Butor uses in this piece are second to none in their ability to influence a reader of following his procedure of travel transformation, and a rhetorical analysis essay on his work only reassured the authenticity of the section about how Butor chose to entertain the reader as the main purpose behind his essay. His attitude toward the audience was strong enough to elicit advice that originated straight from the heart, and in doing that, he empowered readers with the ability to look at books and reading differently for the rest of their
In part fictional and part autobiographical novel “A Small Place” published in 1988, Jamaica Kincaid offers a commentary on how the tenets of white superiority and ignorance seem to emerge naturally from white tourists. She establishes this by using the nameless “you” depicted in the story to elucidate the thoughts they have when visiting such formerly colonized islands. This inner mentality of the white tourists reveals how tourism is still a form of oppression for the natives of such formerly colonized tourists as it continues to exploit them. I will be focusing primarily on page 10 of the text to illustrate this.
Imagine your culture being thrown aside and a new one was all that was taught to you? How would you react to it? In this story the author, Jamaica Kincaid, is talking about how she reacted to this and what happened to her. The author grows up in a place where England colonization had taken place. She grew up in Antigua, a small island in the Caribbean. She is taught all her life about England, a place she has never seen. At an early age she started to realize that the English had taken over her culture. After many years of hating this country she had to see the place that had taught her a different culture and ideas. When she arrives there the hate for the country tripled and she starts to pick apart the entire place and everywhere she goes. As she moves through the countryside her feelings of hate start to show them self’s in her thought and words. The feeling of deja vu, she has been there before, starts to come in after all of the years of maps and description of the foreign land.
...iance, readers are capable of seeing how citizens in the world today try to be independent of others and sustain their personal beliefs and philosophy. Individuals have to put an end to conformity and trying to be a duplication of everyone else because they will never achieve success if they never decide for themselves. A person must not rely on the judgment and minds of others and learn to think for him or herself since depending on others only exhibits a person’s inferiority to larger institutions. People must stop using travel as an excuse to evade personal problems because if they do not have a direct confrontation with the dilemma, trying to escape will only lengthen it. People in today’s society must appreciate this work so they will approve of their individuality and be stronger in fighting against everyone else that disagrees with their personal philosophy.
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resorts, and the glitches in the health care system. Kincaid was an established writer for The New Yorker when she wrote this book, and it can be safely assumed that majority of her readers had, at some point in their lives, been tourists. I have been a tourist so many times before and yet, I had never stopped to consider what happens behind the surface of the countries I visit until I read this essay. Kincaid aims to provoke her readers; her style of writing supports her goal and sets both her and her essay apart. To the reader, it sounds like Kincaid is attacking the beautiful island, pin-pointing the very things that we, as tourists, wish to ignore. No tourist wants to think about faeces from the several tourists in the hotel swimming alongside them in the oceans, nor do they want to think about having accidents and having to deal with the hospital. It seems so natural that a tourist would not consider these, and that is exactly what Kincaid has a problem with.
but creeping into the travel writing of the late ni neteenth century and beyond is the
Many of the classical travel narratives of the past are presented with a main character, with the story revolving around their journey and experience in foreign places. Examples of the traditional way of travel writing are classics like Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby, which is about the writers’ journey to Italy and how he met different people, including his wife, throughout the trip (Dalrymple & Theroux, 2011). There are also recent books like Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert which talks about a middle-aged woman’s travel experience as well as her self-discovery during her trip to India. It is a traditional way of travel writing to be a personal narrative and focus on a hero or heroine. In this essay, I will talk about a piece of writing conforming to this idea and another that does not, they are, namely Triumph on Mount Everest by Stacy Allison and Why We Travel by Pico Lyer.