Small Place

In the first two chapters the narrator illustrates the reader how the former feels about her life, she stated how she resents the way it developed throughout the years. She clearly lived with indignation towards The English, they colonized her homeland, her small island, and left it to ruins.

She confessed about how a person like her sometimes holds retribution. She detested the day Antigua became a colony and succumbed to a whole new culture and way of life. She despised The Barclay Bank, the Mill Reef Club, and basically every institution that the foreigners from Europe, North America or any other rich country could afford to buy in her homeland.

However, even though the English belittled the Antiguans, the latter didn’t hesitate to celebrate the former's holidays. Some Antiguans didn’t even know that the holiday they celebrated was dedicated to the Queen’s birthday, nevertheless they went ahead and celebrated anyways. This sets a clear example of how power and influence played a major role in the outcome of the relationship between The English and The Antiguans. Antiguans invariably recognized that they were victims of an ill-mannered behavior the colonizers assumed towards them.

She resents her destiny, she wishes Antigua had never met the colonizers. She feels The English think Antiguans can’t run things. And she also recognizes that the English culture is an advanced one. English gave Antiguans  a God to worship. In England there are powerful people with monetary wealth and with knowledge; people that know that capitalism is a powerful weapon to have in your favor.

She states how being a tourist and going to Antigua for a few days is definitely very different from being a resident in thus land. When you’re a tourist you get to face their reality for only a few days, you're not permanently subordinated to the adversities such a poor island encounters daily. There even isn’t a capacitated medical personnel to cure the illnesses that the population may encounter.

Ultimately she strongly resents how a foreigner comes to her homeland to make her feel foreign, inferior and worthless. She felt abused by those ill-mannered people that took things that were not theirs, and she was specially struck by the erratic behavior they assumed.

‘Have you ever wondered why is it that all we seem to have learned from you is how to corrupt our societies and how to be tyrants?’

– Jamaica Kinkaid