Monday, October 1, 2007

you are being used
In Disdained Reverie
A close reading of A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid
Essay by Conrad Collins

In this essay, I have chosen to do a close reading of the final chapter of Jamaica Kincaid's novel, A Small Place. This excerpt consists of pages 77-81 of the novel.

The first half of the last chapter of A Small Place can be easily summarized into it's first 3 sentences. "Antigua is beautiful. Antigua is too beautiful." From this point, she goes into immense detail on the different beautiful things found in Antigua, describing all of these things as impossibly beautiful. All of them are things that no "real" thing resembles, and all are, without a doubt, beautiful beyond reason. Kincaid uses this entire first half of the chapter not only to paint the perfect image of Antigua into the reader's mind, but to strengthen that view to the utmost and thoroughly detail exactly how immensely, intangibly beautiful Antigua is. She does this so that there is no doubt on the part of the reader toward Antigua's beauty. She is exact - so that the reader will feel the most perfect emotion she can create. This is important, because when the time comes that she will appeal to that exactly precise emotion, she is absolutely sure that it is the one the reader feels.

A dramatic shift is made evident at the end of that description, when Kincaid says "It is as if, then, the beauty - the beauty of the sea, the land, the air, the trees, the market, the people, the sounds they make - were a prison, and as if everything and everybody inside it were locked in and everything and everybody that is not inside it were locked out." This is where the point Kincaid was building to in her description comes out. All of these things, these intangible beauties, are, in fact, a prison. A holding place - something inescapable and used to capture and permanently enclose those within. It is a prison only understood by those within as well, as "everything and everybody that is not inside it is closed out." Kincaid tells us that these beautiful things are things that are only for Antigua and nowhere else. No where could be Antigua and no one could understand Antigua except Antigua. In using the word "prison," though, she makes sure that you know it is not something escapable or something that Antigua brought upon itself - it is somewhere that Antigua was placed.

"They have nothing to compare this incredible constant with, no big historical moment to compare the way they are now to the way they used to be." Here, Kincaid is talking about how the Antiguan lifestyle has never changed. She is telling how, exactly, it is that this place is comparably to a prison - how it exists in a single perpetual state that is unaffected by anything. Antigua is a place that never changes, and whose people have no way or idea of how to make themselves anything other than what they are. Kincaid summarizes this point with the sentence, "The unreal way in which it is beautiful now that they are a free people is the same way in which it was beautiful when they were slaves." Ultimately, this line is the definition of what she has been trying to say throughout the novel - that Antigua is a small island that has been the same way for as long as anyone can see back.

Next, Kincaid once more talks about exactly the way that Antigua came to be the way it was today. "It was settled by human rubbish from Europe, who used enslaved but noble and exalted human beings from Africa to satisfy their desire for wealth and power. Eventually, the masters left, in a kind of way; eventually, the slaves were freed, in a kind of way." This is Kincaid's way of summarizing everything into one final conclusion. By giving the history all at once right before putting her purpose into direct words, she puts things not only into perspective, but all concisely so that this will be the exact cause-and-effect that the reader will see. Branching the cause to effect, she reminds the reader that, "The people in Antigua now, the people who really think of themselves as Antiguans, are the descendants of those noble and exalted people, the slaves."

On the effect side are the last few sentences of the novel: "Of course, the whole thing is, once you throw off your masters yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too, with the slaves. Once they are no longer slaves, once they are free, they are no longer noble and exalted; they are just human beings." With these sentences, Kincaid not only equalizes the former masters and slaves, but shares her idea of exactly what the problem is with the people whom she complains about, and why there is something wrong with them. The people of Antigua suffer because even though they are no longer slaves, they still live with the mindset of slaves - but as regular human beings, they are the only ones who can do anything about it. As normal human beings, Antiguans are only Antiguans and not anything else - meaning also that nothing else but Antigua is Antigua. This is how Antigua is a prison, and how any place is a prison - it encompasses itself. Antigua is only as much as Antiguans will ever make it to be, and as long as their minds are those of people who who are slaves, that is all that Antiguans will ever be. In reality, this is an absolute universal truth, only concentrated so that one can see it in it's true form.