A Small Place Analysis

Hatred. Truthfulness. Corruption. Poverty. Ugly. A Small Place authored by Jamaica Kincaid is consistent with these words. Her work showed great passion illustrated through rude language to demonstrate her experiences. She, one of many people, experienced struggle and pain throughout her childhood. Now she shares the story of Antigua, her home. By viewing through the Postcolonial, Marxist, and New Criticism lenses, the reader is able to perceive Jamaica Kincaid’s perspective on the changes. In Jamaica Kincaid’s essay, A Small Place, her intent for the reader is to become aware of Antigua's past becomes more purposeful when considering how colonialism affected Antigua’s political future, the hierarchy of power, and her use of literary elements.

When one reads her essay, he or she can be confused by her writing style because it isn’t like any other usual books. It writes with anger and proper English, which can be hard to read sometimes, and structure like no other. But still her writing is unique because she shows great passion, anger and bitter humor. In A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid describes the beauty of Antigua. How beautiful the sunset looks over the ocean and the blue sea, like no other (Kincaid 77). This passage was full of emotion and is a talented piece. Her work was purposeful and although repetitive, interesting enough to capture the reader’s attention. She explained how Antigua was beautiful; because it’s Antigua, full of the natives, but now the island was riddled with darkness and pain. Antigua had changed due to colonization from Europe, “Thus, love and hatred, sympathy and rage, loyalty and subversion coexist in her sentence, producing a powerful, complicated, layered verbal texture” (Hirsh and Schweitzer 478). The change reflected the love and hatred between Antigua and Europe. While reading one can definitely sense “Kincaid’s voice, expressed in a prose style so powerful and hypnotic… and in the powerful expression of a subconscious emotional landscape. Her style has been characterized as particularly feminine, in its use of strong rhythms and refrains to get beyond the imposed rationality of the “father” and of male-dominated culture. (Hirsc’8h and Schweitzer 477). Her tone was straightforward and arge. The reader should notice her aggressive style on which Jamaica Kincaid purposely tries to offend the reader. Therefore, looking through the New Criticism lens, Kincaid was able to express her anger through the use of irony, tone and other literarcy