Author?
Jamaica Kincaid
Publication date?
1988
How many sections is the book broken into?
4
What are the main figures or who are the characters in the text?
Jamaica Kincaid, the American and European tourists, the Antiguan Prime Minister, and the Queen of England are the main figures in the text.What other information would you look for in the text to support this?
I would look for the relationships, systems and problems revolving Imperialism that Kincaid describes or blames.
Setting
1) Where does the story take place?
Antigua. According to the narrative the story is from an native Antiguan in the role of a tourist
2) When does the story take place?
The story takes place in present day according to evidence read in the text
3) Find ten quotes that describe the setting.
1- Pg. 3 What a beautiful island Antigua is - more beautiful than any of the other islands you have seen
2- Pg. 12 Far out, to the horizon, the colour of the water is navy-blue; nearer, the water is the colour of the North American sky
3- Pg 62 (The condominium style of building, ugly in any climate, is especially ugly in a small, hot place
4- Pg 69 ...degradation and humiliation of their daily lives into their own tourist attraction
5- Pg 77 Antigua is too beautiful. Sometimes the beauty of it seems unreal
6- Pg 77 No real day and no real night could be that evenly divided- twelve hours of one and twelve hours of the other, no real day would begin that dramatically or end that dramatically
7- Pg 78 No real sand on any real shore is that fine or that white (in some places) or that pink (in other places)
8- Pg. 78 No real village with such a name would be so beautiful in its pauperedness, its simpleness , its one roomed houses painted in unreal shades of pink and yellow and green
9- Pg. 79 The market on a Saturday morning, where the colours of the fruits and the vegetables and the colours of the clothes people are wearing and the colour of the day itself itself, and the colour of the nearby sea, and the colour of the sky, which is just overhear and seems so close you might reach up and touch it
4) Has the place changed or stayed the same?
The place has stayed the same. The author keeps mentioning that after Antigua was free to run their own country, only once was there people in power who cared about the country. The only buildings that are fixed and taken care of are the hotels and any place that someone important has visited or sent money to.
5) What is the political atmosphere?
The government is all about money. They are connected to drug smugglers. Nothing is done for the people who live in the country to better their lives. The government does not help.
6) What is the economic atmosphere?
In Antigua it seems you are either rich from drug smuggling or doing other horrible things or you are dirt poor. There is no middle class.
7) Find four quotes that show how the setting is connected to the Conflict in the text.
“…. Antiguans always talk about the doctors, “I don’t want them near me”; that Antiguans refer to them not doctors as “three men” … that when the Minister of health himself doesn’t feel well he takes the first plane to New York to see a real doctor…” pg.
“…Now they own a lot of Antigua; they regularly lend money to the government, they build enormous(for Antigua), ugly(for Antigua), concrete buildings in Antigua’s capital, St. John’s which the government regularly rents for huge sums of money;…a member of the family is the Antiguan ambassador to Syria; Antiguans hate him.” Pg. 11
“…In the Antigua I know we lived on a street named after a English maritime criminal” pg.24
“…who wanted to live in Antigua and spend holidays in Antigua but who seemed not to like Antiguans (black people)at all, for the Mill Reef declared itself private, and only Antiguans (black people) allowed to go there were servants…”pg.
“…The English have become a pitiful lot these days, with hardly any idea what to do with themselves now that they no longer have one quarter of the earth’s population bowing and scarping before them….you had always felt people like me cannot run things, people like me never grasp the idea of a National Product, people like me will never understand the notion of rule by law…”pg 36
8) From this information, what do you understand the Theme of the text to be?
The theme is the historical colonial oppression of black Antiguans persists in an entirely new form, in that of of a corrupt government and foreigners owning most of the land and power while local black Antiguans own nothing much of the place where they call and know as home.
9) What other information would you look for in the text to support this?
Look for who owns businesses, who hold high positions , how the government is run.
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