Breanna
Campbell
CLT
361 Presentation Research Prompt 2
In this text, the narrator employs the second person in her
language. Find one sentence about every six pages where the narrator employs
the second person in the text. Place these sentences in a list. Write out a
hypothesis regarding the use of second person address. Why does the narrator
appear to be addressing the reader?
1. You
are a tourist and you have not yet seen a school in Antigua, you have not yet seen a hospital in
Antigua, you have not yet seen a
public monument in Antigua. (pg.1)
2. You
have brought your own books with you,
and among them is one of those new books
about economic history, one of those books explaining how the West (meaning
Europe and North America after its conquest and settlement by Europeans) got
rich: the West got rich not from the free (free- in this case meaning
got-for-nothing) and then undervalued labour, for generations, of the people
like me you see walking around you in Antigua but from the ingenuity
of small shopkeepers in Sheffield and Yorkshire and Lancashire, or wherever…and
so you needn’t let that slightly
funny feeling you have from time to
time about exploitation, oppression, domination develop into full-fledged
unease, discomfort; you could ruin
your holiday. (pg 9-10)
3. An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly, empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece
of rubbish pausing there and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will
never occur to you that the people
who inhabit that place in which you
have just paused cannot stand you….
(pg 17)
4.
Have I given you the impression that the Antigua that I grew up in revolved
almost completely around England? Well,
that was so. (pg 33)
5. Oh, you
might be saying to yourself, Why is she so undone at what has become of the
library, why does she think that is a good example of corruption, of things
gone bad? (pg 42)
6. Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master’s yoke, you
are no longer human rubbish, you are
just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. Pg 81
Jamaica Kincaid uses the terms “you”
and “your” in an accusatory tone. The ‘you’
she is referring to is tourists and outsiders of Antigua. This ‘you’ is the typical middle or
upper-class white person coming from Europe or North America that has the privilege
to go on vacation to places like Antigua.
‘You’ is the reason why Antigua is unstable and why the economy is so
poor. The author can put total blame on
outsiders to her country and that’s why she hates tourists.
Kincaid believes that this ‘you’ is
ignorant of the problems of Antigua and when they do see them they just ignore
it because it would ruin their “holiday”.
The English enslaved Antigua and then left them with nothing letting
them fend for themselves, but still worship England. Kincaid is angry that her country allows
itself to love England when they have done nothing for them. She is mad that her fellow Antiguans do not
share her anger.
The constant use of the word ‘you’
reminds me of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” from the Brady Bunch. This makes her sound a little jealous of the
white tourists that visit Antigua, just like Jan was jealous of Marsha on the
TV show. Tourists go to her land to get
away from their boring lives and to enjoy sunshine for a few days
straight. Kincaid does not have the
luxury to leave and enjoy other countries.
She finds England to be a horrible place because of what they did to her
home country.
Jamaica Kincaid addresses the reader
in this manner to say that every tourist is a horrible person because they do
not understand the history of the places they visit. They do not realize they are putting more
money towards the lifestyle of the corrupt officials of Antigua. She hates ‘you’ for hindering the freedom of
her people and is jealous of all the freedom that ‘you’ have.
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