The third book I chose in this challenge turned out to be very good. A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid was recommended to me by my wife, a ninth and tenth grade English teacher at our school. The book's assets for me included its high recommendation and its very short 81 pages of text. During a long weekend of student comments and advisee letter writing together, these were both important.
The action in the book is set in Antigua. The book's winding path considers both the legacy of corruption, which colonialism has bequeathed to the narrator's island culture, and the identity of its descendants. The tension in the book arises from ubiquitous boredom - an existential fact of life - that lead tourists to far off places. It is a source of double-suffering for natives, who cannot leave and are reminded of this fact daily in their lives when it is also personified in the form of the tourists.
Under other circumstances (see note about comments/letters above), I would love to write an essay on the work. However, I will quote from the book regarding the narrator's apprehension of the underlying banality of life as the motivation for the tourist and a dual source of suffering for the native:
That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.The theme of banality in the tourist/native drama plays out, in miniature, the larger theme of corruption in the colonizer/slave relationship. An essay drawing out these parallels would constitute a very interesting and engaging challenge. Perhaps I will get to this once the other projects I am working on are done.
This book reminded me of some of my favorite ethical arguments against luxury purchases put forth in the excellent documentary "Examined Life" and some of Peter Singer's academic work and social work.
This is why I sometimes feel stressed out when on vacation or at a Strip Club.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I'm not sure if I'd agree with your ethical arguments against luxury purchases. I've heard arguments that declare the Pyramids, Notre Dame and NASA to be decadent and immoral considering the starving masses, but something about those three things make me proud and inspired to be a human.