ipl-logo

On Seeing England For The First Time Rhetorical Analysis

757 Words4 Pages

Imagine your culture being taken away and a fresh one was all that was educated to you? How would you respond to it? In this essay, “On Seeing England for the First Time”, Jamaica Kincaid informs us about her experiences growing up in Antigua, a small island located in the Caribbean, which was a British colony at the time. England is everywhere in Kincaid’s life as a child because she lives on a British colony. She is taught all her life about England, a place she has never discerned. At an early age she began to realize that the English had taken over her ethnicity. After many years of detestation towards this country she had to see the place that had taught her a different ethnicity and ideas. When she arrives there the odium for the country …show more content…

Kincaid tells us that her hatred for England arose of the way that she was expected to be English as a teen. Kincaid uses rhetorical strategies in her essay to help us better comprehend her despising and angry attitude towards England. Kincaid appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos when she proves her despising attitude towards England. Kincaid uses ethos in her first paragraph when she says, “…England was to be our source of myth and the source from which we got our sense of reality, our sense of what was meaningful, our sense of what was meaningless-and much about our own lives and much about the very idea of us headed that last list”. It generally connects to ethos because she establishes herself as a reliable source because of her experiences with …show more content…

Kincaid uses irony when she talks about how “England was a special jewel all right and only special people got to wear it”. In this piece of essay, Kincaid is uttering that England is this scarcity that people sense the need to admire. Everybody in Antigua was in fear of England and its people, yet Kincaid felt that no one in the colonies was received into that ethnicity. The tone in this essay was proven in many different spots. Kincaid’s imposing attitude is portrayed when her tone changes “it had written on it the name of the company, the year of the company was established, and the words “Made in England.” Her tones proves that she is being forced to be accepted in a British culture due to her surrounding of English made

Open Document