Marxist Criticism In A Small Place By Jamaica Kincaid
It’s Not So Hot in Paradise As an American from the Midwest, the image that comes to mind of life on a Caribbean island is paradise which evokes a feeling of peace and tranquility. A place where one can escape the snow and freezing temperatures during the long winter months. A place one could enjoy beautiful beaches, tropical trees and green foliage year round.
Michelle Cliff’s short story Down the Shore conspicuously deals with a particularly personal and specific, deeply psychological experience, in order to ultimately sub-textually create a metaphor regarding a wider issue of highly social nature. More specifically, the development of the inter-dependent themes of trauma, exploitation, as well as female vulnerability, which all in the case in question pertain to one single character, also latently extend over to the wider social issue of colonialism and its entailing negative repercussions, in this case as it applies to the Caribbean and the British Empire. The story’s explicit personal factor is developed through the literary techniques of repetition, symbolism, metaphor, as well as slightly warped albeit telling references to a distinct emotional state, while its implicit social factor is suggested via the techniques of allusion, so as to ultimately create a generally greater, undergirding metaphor.
The passage “On Seeing England for the First Time” by Jamaica Kincaid uses repetition and figurative language to convey her resentment toward England. Jamaica Kincaid uses repetition in her passage to show how her attitudes toward England as it slowly erased the Antigua’s culture. Kincaid uses the words “Made in England” to express how the English had dominated their culture and their way of life; the Antigua people had been asphyxiated by the English and their culture so aggressively and for so long that they began feeling inferior for not being English which made them try even harder to strive and be just like them because they considered that their main goal, to be able to be part of the magnificence that was the english culture. She goes on to explain how she had to change personal aspects to be more acceptable by her society
Poverty is “...the most savage of all human afflictions” (1). It “...[spreads] like a cancer” through generations that become ever more powerless to “...mobilize their efforts against it” (1). Nowhere is this more clear than in Gordon Parks’ essay, “Flavio’s Home”. Parks vividly retells the story of a young boy, Flavio de Silva, and his family as they struggle to survive on grossly less than the bare minimum in the slums of Rio.
In Small Island, Hortense is ridiculed in London by the host society for her aspirations despite being a Black woman. Hortense trained as a teacher in Jamaica and ‘was the talk of the college for several weeks.’ Hortense’s privileged upbringing is a reflection of her high hopes for England and the educational advantages she feels she will be entitled to in Britain. Although, Hortense is well-respected feelings of superiority often interject Hortense’s outlook on the opportunities available to her in Britain. Thus, she is alienated in the British educational system due to institutionalised racism and nowhere will hire her because she is black.
She achieves her aim in highlighting that the prohibitive laws which reduce people like her to mere sexual bodies is a psycho-social remnant of the colonial past. She addresses a number of audiences within the piece, including the human rights community, the governments of both her native Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas, and by extension all citizens of the Caribbean and wider world who have been disenfranchised by laws that diminish their humanity and highlight their perceived iniquity. The implication of her essay is clear: if not just any body can be a citizen, the democracy which we have set up is in need of some adjustment. It relates to us because it reminds us that for every time we deny any body rights, we have failed to live up to the principles on which are postcolonial societies are supposed to be
Kincaid’s Reason for A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid writing style, in A Small Place, makes the reader feel attacked. Her word choices also make the reader think about themselves. British colonization and its effect is the root of Kincaid 's anger. By looking through the Post-colonial, Marxists, and New Criticism literary lenses it reveals her reason of writing and it shows deeper emotions and ideas.
Marxist Criticism, specifically the Hegelian Dialectic is applicable in Bambara’s short story, “The Lesson”. Social class is predominant at the time “The Lesson” was written and the story focuses on the main character, Sylvia’s perception of her own class, the struggles that it brings and what she is then introduced to by Miss Moore. The Hegelian Dialect can be applied to this story as the transformation ensues within Sylvia upon her enlightenment of the difference in social classes. What appeared to be anger, frustration and resentment within Sylvia, undergoes a conversion into an upheaval curiosity of a newfound “culture”. Does the enlightenment occurring within Sylvia, present a new synthesis of which she uses as a platform for change?
In the short story “Blackness” by Jamaica Kincaid, the narrator’s consciousness develops through a process of realization that she does not have to choose between the culture imposed on her and her authentic heritage. First, the narrator explains the metaphor “blackness” for the colonization her country that fills her own being and eventually becomes one with it. Unaware of her own nature, in isolation she is “all purpose and industry… as if [she] were the single survivor of a species” (472). Describing the annihilation of her culture, the narrator shows how “blackness” replaced her own culture with the ideology of the colonizers.
“No, this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I’ve lived here (Cisneros 106).” This quote shows Esperanza’s unwillingness of accepting her poor neighbourhood because of the violence and inequality that has happened in it. In the House on Mango Street, the author, Sandra Cisneros, shows that there is a direct link between inequality, violence and poverty. The House on Mango Street shows women are held back by the inequalities that they face. Cisneros shows that racism prevents individuals from receiving job opportunities which leads to poverty and violence.
In Jamaica Kincaid’s essay “On Seeing England for the First Time”, she clearly voices her animosity towards the one place her whole life surrounded as a child in hopes of persuading her audience into understanding that there is a fine line between dreams and realities. As an adult, Kincaid finally is able to travel to England to witness firsthand what all the hype was about and why her childhood and education happened to be based around the fantasy customs of this country. Noticing that every detail of her life revolved around England, from the way she ate her food to the naming of her family members, Kincaid found her hatred growing more and more. Coming from a British colony, the obsession with England drove Kincaid crazy to the point that she finally traveled there one day. She says, “The space between the idea of something and its reality is always wide and deep and dark” (37).
Marxism is the idea of social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. Social processes are the way individuals and groups interact, adjust and reject and start relationships based on behavior which is modified through social interactions. Overall marxism analyzes how societies progress and how and society ceases to progress, or regress because of their local or regional economy , or global economy. In this case, Marxism’s theory applies to the novel, Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, where a society where mass satisfaction is the instrument utilized by places of power known as the Alphas in order to control the oppressed by keeping the Epsilons numb, at the cost of their opportunity to choose their own way of life. Marx thinks that an individual had a specific job to do in order to contribute to their community and that is the only way to do so; There is no escaping your contribution either.
Marxist Within the Mockingbird Today the world is open to people of all races, economic classes and much more, but in the 1930’s the world was not as accepting. To Kill A Mockingbird, is a book by Harper Lee which takes place in the 1930’s. Throughout the story there are issues with feminism, racism, and injustice. It starts with a young girl and her family, and as the book progresses the reader gets to find out some of the things that go on in their life and around them. Such as a stressful case which includes, a black innocent man who is accused for something he did not do.
Inequality between social classes has been a problem for humanity since social organization exists. The texts “I Am The People, The Mob” by Carl Sandburg and “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” by Nick Hanauer both address an issue about inequality, relevant for each’s author’s context. While “The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats” expresses a point of view for higher class people and about a modern-day problem, “I Am The People, The Mob” describes a problem in a context of a century before and for a less wealthy class. Text C, “I Am The People, The Mob” is a poem written in 1916, for an audience of people that were not part of the higher social classes but were oppressed by them.
In this essay I will discuss Marxism in relation to the book series Harry Potter written by J.K Rowling. Even though The Harry Potter series is a children’s book series, when they are read carefully, the readers can see aspects of Marxism in it. One of the aspects that I will be focusing on in this essay is the idea of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. For the purpose of this essay I will be looking at the Harry Potter series but focusing on the last book, The Deathly Hallows as there are more examples of the ideas Marxism.
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