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Let me just show you how you looked to us (Kincaid 35). That is exactly what Jamaica Kincaid expressed, with malice, in A Small Place. The you is identified as being the reader, a tourist, someone who travels in the pursuit of pleasure. Kincaid feels strong resentment towards the tourist who comes to Antigua, a place where Antiguans suffer and want to escape. The natives suffer and slave in order to provide pleasure for the tourist. While the natives are trapped on their tiny island, living in poor conditions, working to make the tourist happy, they wish that they could be you.
But because they cant, they feel resentment. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself (Kincaid 19). The you created in A Small Place is as the reader. The reader may never have been to Antigua and visited, but Kincaid wants to put the reader in the shoes of a tourist in Antigua.
By putting the reader in the shoes of a tourist in Antigua, Kincaid can express how she feels. While discussing in class, many students identified with the you only in the sense that they were not native to Antigua and that they are tourists at times. Whether or not theyve ever been a tourist in Antigua doesnt matter to Kincaid; she wants to put them in the shoes of someone who is coming to Antigua for pleasure. Using the word you to address the reader/ tourist, who in the book are both the same person, is more personal. Kincaid gets the readers attention and make them understand by using the word you, instead of tourist, to make it feel more personal. It seems almost as if she is actually speaking to you when she uses the word you in the book to address the reader.
By identifying with you personally, I feel that I have accomplished the goal Kincaid has set for me the reader: anger and resentment. Through her clever wording she engages the reader to feel as frustrated as she does (classmate). She wants you to feel her anger and resentment. By using the harsh tone and criticism of you, she accomplishes that. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel (said by Carl W. Buechner).
She wants the reader to understand how she feels and to feel her anger. All Kincaid wants is for the reader to understand. By being hostile towards the reader, she leaves the reader with a feeling of anger. While I dont feel that anyone can forget what Kincaid had to say, if for some reason they do forget what she had said, they most likely will remember how they felt upon reading the first half of A Small Place. The reader will think about the anger Kincaid provoked in them, and then they will be able to think about how angry she is.
She wants the reader to know that how she is feeling isnt something that should be taken lightly. She wants the reader to know and understand the reality of the situation in Antigua. She wants the reader to understand that its something that is important to her and other Antiguans. Kincaid wants to grab the attention of the reader and she has apparently done so by provoking anger. The reaction of a classmate was that In the first part, I was very shocked that a writer would dare to speak to her reader in such a way as she did.
However, after reading the second part, I realize now that she (1) wanted to catch the readers attention so that they would understand her strife when she unveiled it and (2) make it known how angry she was at the tourists taking control of just about everything on the island. I can now understand why she was so angered in the first part. Kincaid wanted people not native to Antigua to understand their situation, and she has accomplished that. The books criticism of you strengthened her argument.
In order for her argument to be strong, it needed to produce a sense of alienating the reader and Kincaid needed to be defensive. Its obviously something she feels strongly and passionately about, and she defended her arguments strongly by being defensive; she defended her right to express her feelings and emotions. By using you to address the reader, not only did it produce a personal feeling, it also produced a feeling of singling the reader out and alienating the reader. By singling the reader out, it could produce a variety of reaction from them; it could produce shock, sympathy, anger, offense, amongst others. By producing such reactions, it allows the reader to remember how her words made them feel. Unless we remember, we cannot understand (said by Edward M.
Forster). Kincaid wants you to understand why she is so angry and hostile, and by criticizing you she can accomplish that. While Kincaid may give the reader the sense that she is condemning them and judging them, what she is most trying to accomplish is to produce a sense of understanding in the reader. The only way she can do this is by getting their attention and making the criticism sound personal and condemning. She wants the reality of the situation to be known, felt, and understood.
Kincaid has accomplished what she sought to do in writing her book. The response of many classmates has shown that. She was personal with the reader, and it caused them to get a reaction. Whether the reaction was good or bad, it still created a reaction. By being personal with the reader, students became the reader Kincaid wanted. My initial reaction to the book was that I was kind of offended.
I was offended because she was talking to me personally (classmate) Kincaid accomplished her goal in producing the reaction by being personal. I feel that the students in class understand what it is that Kincaid is trying to accomplish. One student even said that they feel Kincaid accomplished what it was she wanted to accomplish in writing this book. I feel that I have accomplished the goal Kincaid has set for me the reader: anger and resentment. Kincaid was able to make the readers become the kind of readers she desired. The tone in the first half of the book was the most useful in creating the readers Kincaid wanted and in producing the reaction Kincaid wanted.
The harshness grabbed the attention of the reader and allowed them to feel her frustrations; it was resonant. It left a lasting impression on the reader. However, while the first half of the book was effective, the second half was not. In the first half, Kincaid criticizes you and speaks on a personal level.
In the second half she does not speak to the reader on a personal level. The tone is no longer harsh and criticizing of the reader; the reader is no longer interested. In the first half I was much more interested. I wanted to keep reading to find out what she was accusing me of. The second half lost that, and I wasnt as interested. There was no more conflict in the second half.
She was just telling us how Antigua is because of colonialism (classmate). The second half lost that effective tone of voice that was consistently present throughout the first half. While Kincaid accomplished what she wanted, in the second part of the book she loses the interest of the reader. Its as if she knew after the first part of the book that she would accomplish her goal, and then she just gave up in the second half because the goal was already accomplished. She needs to keep that same harsh and effective tone throughout the second half that she had in the first half. I found the first half of the book better.
I wanted to know what she was going to say, at whom she was going to charge. I was intrigued by her anger and her hostility to tourists, North Americans and Europeans. The second half of the book, I found myself counting the pages till the end of at least the third chapter. I was kind of let down by the second part, or I was too built up by the first part. (classmate).
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