Monday, October 1, 2007

More schoolwork
A Small Place - Jamaica Kincaid
Two-Faced Journal
by: Conrad Collins

IRONY

"Sometimes the beauty of it seems unreal. Sometimes the beauty of it seems as if it were a stage for a play, for no real sunset could look like that [etc]" (Kincaid 75).

Kincaid intends for more meaning to be found in these words than simply that Antigua is a beautiful place. It is obvious as well that she does not truly believe the no real sunset could be so beautiful, because it is already a real sunset. It is the sunset of Antigua. Kincaid is being ironic in saying that the beauty of Antigua is not actually possible because she, herself, questions it's ability to be so. With a world that is as distraught as the one she sees, it becomes unrealistic that a place which beholds such glory could exist.
Irony Type: Socratic

"You long to eat some nice lobster, some nice local food" (Kincaid 12).

This is a play on how tourists go to different countries and try to immerse themselves in the culture, unaware that they probably are blind to most of it. Like in America, where foreign food restaurants serve things only found in America, tourists often find themselves eating supposed "local food" which the "locals" probably do not even eat. In a poverty-stricken land such as Antigua, it would be daft to believe that they enjoy such expensive cuisine as lobster.
Irony Type: Comic

"(and the people who would immediately come to your mind when you think about Antiguans; I mean, supposing you were to think about them)" (Kincaid 80).

This line is ironic because it is at the very end of the novel. Kincaid has spent the entire 80 pages describing Antigua and Antiguans and giving you an idea of what they are like. This whole time, she makes you think about Antigua and Antiguans, and then leaves the note "I mean, supposing you were to think about them" as if she hasn't been talking about them for (what for me was) 2 hours now.
Irony Type: Comic

"For it is in a voice that suggests all three that they say: "That big new hotel is a haven for drug dealing" (Kincaid 57).

This line is interesting because as much as I searched, I couldn't find the other end of the quotation mark before the word "That". It occurred to me that, unless it's just a typo, Kincaid did not intend to end the quote, because she was quoting the entirety of the rest of the novel. Basically, she used this as a method of changing subjects. She goes from questioning her upbringing to talking about the affairs of the country with only the beginning of this sentence in-between. Thereby, when she says the words "they say" she is actually referring to herself, and saying that she feels as if she might be exactly what she thinks Antiguans to be. This is one of the most easily overlooked but most important lines in the book.
Irony Type: Socratic

"The Syrians and Lebanese are not "white people"" (Kincaid 63).

This is a double-entandeur of sorts. Kincaid is talking about how the people from North America and Europe are called "white people" while the Lebanese and Syrians are called "those foreigners". When she says that "the Syrians and Lebanese are not "white people", it is obvious that she means that the people of Antigua do not refer to them as such. However, it is ironic because the people of Syria and Lebanon actually aren't white, so it wouldn't make sense to call them that anyway.
Irony Type: I'm not sure

THEME

"I look at this place (Antigua) and I look at these people (Antiguans), and I cannot tell whether I was brought up by, and so come from, children, eternal innocents, or artists who have not yet found their eminence in a world too stupid to understand, or lunatics who have made their own lunatic asylum, or an exquisite combination of all three" (Kincaid 57).

This line really sums up all the themes about the personalities or general mindsets about antiguans. To put it into simpler words, Kincaid is wondering if the Antiguans are a people who simply aren't matured to the rest of the world, or if they are people with potential that has not yet come into being, or if they are already past the ability to function properly, or if they are more complicated than any single of those categories.

"(all masters of every stripe are rubbish, and all slaves of every stripe are noble and exalted - there can be no question about this)" (Kincaid 80).

Kincaid shows her opinions strongly in this quote and with the last line of the book where she goes on to say that as soon as these roles are dissipated, so too are their placements. This goes along not only with the theme of slavery, but with the theme of events as well. She is saying how, in the time of an event, the roles of it's participant are always set and are only kept through the course of that event.

"A calypso singer's body was found, with the head chopped off, near the island's United States Army base. To this day, no one has been charged with this murder" (Kincaid 63).

This line, as well as the ones describing other brutal, mysterious deaths on the island, reminded me of a show I've seen called Higurashi no Naku Koro ni in which there is a small town out in the country of Japan where a number of brutal murders occur but are unexplained and not properly investigated. This is a show of just how small and closed off from the outside word Antigua is.

"Antigua is beautiful" (Kincaid 75).

When Kincaid uses her long description of Antigua's apparently unrealistic beauty, she is once again stressing how cut-off it is from the rest of the world. By describing it in such a way that saying that the rest of the world pales in comparison to this beauty n a way that makes it difficult to perceive, she stresses just how different and set apart Antigua is. It fits the theme of unquestionable beauty that Kincaid assures the reader is present in Antigua.

"You must not wonder what happened to the contents of your lavatory when you flushed it" (Kincaid 13).

There is a constant theme of the parallel beauty and ugliness of Antigua throughout the novel. Even though the place is one that is amazingly beautiful, it is a place full of poverty and uncleanliness and bad things. To a tourist, whom is blind to the ugly parts of Antigua, there is no concern for what might be behind the scenes if only they would stop to think about it.

ANTIGUAN ATTITUDE TOWARD TIME

"Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings" (Kincaid 81).

Kincaid notes throughout the book how the people of Antigua have never really moved past the mindset of slaves. Or rather, they have never tried to look past what they already have and try to achieve anything - they just live the life that has been given to them. Once they were free of slavery, it wasn't as if they suddenly became free and had lives to live - they just kept doing things in the way they felt they could - no longer slaves, but regular human beings with free minds that they simply weren't using.

"In Antigua, not only is an event turned into everyday, but the everyday is turned into an event" (Kincaid 56).

In small places like Antigua, people are bored, and word gets around fast about things. Kincaid notes how the events in Antigua can perpetuate themselves, or the everyday can turn into something more important, and both of these things at various times, in rotation. It is as if to say that Antigua is in one perpetual state that never alters beyond the occasional and the mundane. Really, by saying that "event" and "everyday" are interchangeable, she basically means that there really are no events in Antigua. Everything just is what it is.

"And then they speak of emancipation as if it happened just the other day, not over one hundred and fifty years ago" (Kincaid 55).

This is probably the most direct line regarding the Antiguans' idea of time. In Antigua, there doesn't seem to be any real understanding of just what emancipation was. Or if they do, then they don't realize how little it actually meant. Kincaid describes the Antiguan attitude toward emancipation as something that they think of as a sudden freedom which sprang up and saved them all, when in reality it only said that they were no longer owned without giving them real freedom, but convincing them that they had it.

"When the future, bearing it's own events, arrives, its ancestry is then traced in a trancelike retrospect, at the end of which, their mouths and eyes open wide with their astonishment, the people in a small place reveal themselves to be like children being shown the secrets of a magic trick" (Kincaid 54).

Aside from being possibly the coolest line in the book, this piece really brings out he meaning of the last quote. Once again, this is Kincaid's way of pointing out the Antiguan obsession with a past they do not really understand. They view the past as a chain of events which created the place they live in now, rather than as something which still effects them. Though it is not concerned in the story, this really is true for most places in the world.

"In the accounts of the capture and enslavement of black people almost no slave ever mentions who captured and delivered him or her to their European master. In accounts of their corrupt government, Antiguans neglect to say that in twenty years of one form of self-government r another, they have, with one five-year exception, placed in power the present government" (Kincaid 56).

Once more, this is an example of Kincaid showing how the Antiguans have not escaped their slave mindset. They still act as though they have no power, and as if the people above them have all the control, and that they cannot do anything, despite having given power to those individuals.

MESSAGE ABOUT AMERICANS (OR WORSE, EUROPEANS)

"So 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).

One of the interesting things about Kincaid's incredibly sarcastic writing is that she comes across as completely hating the Americans and Europeans beyond a shadow of a doubt, when really, she doesn't see anything different about them from others. In this passage, it is made evident that Kincaid sees everyone as someone who wishes to escape their everyday lives, and that those who cannot envy those who can. However, she also makes it appear as though those who have the opportunities are inherently evil, and those who are without opportunities are inherently good, though wether she means this or not is something only she knows.

"And so everywhere they went they tuned into England, everyone they met they turned into English. But no place could ever really be England, and nobody who didn't look exactly like them could ever be English" (Kincaid 24).

Kincaid goes on for a while about ho the English seem to all hate each other and their country and want to escape, and therefor go off only to try and transform everyone else into English. In reality, this would be true for any place, only England is the one who wielded the power and thus went forth with these unspeakable acts. Once again, it seems as if Kincaid knows this, but hates them anyway.

"we thought perhaps that the English among them were not English at all, for the English were supposed to be civilized" (Kincaid 30).

Kincaid shows here how, to the people of Antigua, the English seemed to be horribly rude, terrible people who were so un-polite in caparison to them that they could not have been the English they had heard of. In reality, this could be chalked down to a mere difference in cultures, but it shows how poorly the English represented themselves to the Antiguans.

"All they see is some frumpy, wrinkled-up person passing by in a carriage waving at a crowd. But what I see is the millions of people, of whom I am just one, made orphans" (Kincaid 31).

When Kincaid speaks of her hatred of North Americans' view of the English and how her own differs, she makes a point about different perspectives of different groups of people. To one who's life is not effected by the English, it only looks like a people with a rich background on the other side of the world. To a country who's been horribly effected by those peoples' influence, though, they would look like an entirely different sort of being.

"he understands the word "bad" in this way: a fellow criminal betrayed a trust" (Kincaid 32).

Putting a firm meaning behind this line is probably not something I am fully capable of achieving, nor is it something I ought to so adamantly attempt, but simply put, it has me interested, because when Kincaid produces this definition in one of her many tangents (realistically, this book it a collection of tangents and not much more) she is questioning herself and becoming indecisive of her own world view. When she talks about the horror of having only the criminal's tongue to describe the crime committed, she seems to loose the meaning of what point she was exactly trying to make (which is what I probably look like I'm doing right now). However, this line stuck out as especially good to me as one of many 'everyone's to blame' lines featured in this novel (some of which I've used above). In this line, Kincaid is saying that in one's own language, the meanings of good and bad are only decided by that language itself. In the English language, bad is what the English make the word mean. And therefor, when Kincaid says that something is bad with her own mind, she cannot say it meaning that it is something truly bad, for the language she is using does not allow for it. Had she her own language, she could truly detail the crimes of the English and how horrible things are, but really, because of this crime, she is left only with the criminals tongue and nothing to speak the truth with.