Measures of Dispersion and Variability: Range, QD, AD and SD
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A Small Place Essay
1. A Small Place Analysis
Tyrisha Patterson
ENG 203
10/12/17
Fort Payne's Memories
Kincaid wrote A Small Place after she had left the island nineteen years ago. During this period,
she had been a creative writer living permanently in the United States. She had spent much of her
time on the island. Her hostile verbal talk after coming back to the island is an indication of how
she is both a tourist and native as she claims 'every native of every place is a potential tourist, and
every tourist is a native of somewhere'(Kincaid,18). She beautifully describes Antigua and describes
it as a place where the sky and sea meet to exaggerate the island's surrealism. It shows that
attachment place. Her style makes me recall my childhood and teenage experiences of living in Fort
Payne that helped shape my identity. Kincaid's style of writing establishes an intriguing reflection
journey for the reader to undergo. The surrealism of Antigua remains as the same as it was back
before Kincaid relocated elsewhere. In her book, A Small Place, Kincaid illustrates how Antigua
holds different meaning to different people. To the white people, Antigua is a place for people to
get away from their lives as indicated 'a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom'
(Kincaid, 18). Kincaid's description of the island is amazingly beautiful that to some extent it
appears unreal. Despite the fact that the place is beautiful, the depicted poorness of the people
appears unreal. It indicates that the beauty of the area is
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2. Small Town Essay
Being raised in a small town, I constantly viewed my hometown being small as a bad thing.
Throughout middle school and high school, my tiny town was a place I used to look forward to
leaving, it definitely was not a place I thought I would find myself missing. The second I left my
small town, I could not wait to go back home. I didn't acknowledge how special it was to grow up
in a town where I knew everyone and had the ability to leave my front door unlocked without
worrying while I ran around town running errands. Looking back on my small town I have grown
to love that I grew up in a tiny town in "the middle of nowhere." It made me who I am today. Huge
cities like New York City, Los Angeles, and Boston might be fun to visit, but I would
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Living in a small town, you are forced to find ways to stand out from the crowd, which easily
teaches selfâreliance and selfâconfidence. I have also learned to be trusting in other people, I have
found that people mean well for the most part. Learning to trust people in a small town comes
easily, the crime rate in my town is so low that the only things police have to worry about are
misbehaving children. My parents never had to worry that I might be abducted or that I might
get involved in illegal activities or get mixed up with the wrong crowd. I have developed a
compassionate and constructive point of view in my life and learned to experience things that I
would not have experienced otherwise.I have learned to appreciate the many traditions in my
town, there are so many traditions that people in other places are too lazy to do. However,
growing up in a small town has taught me to enjoy these as much as possible and to be a
conscious and useful human being. I have learned the importance of family better than most
people. Unlike the parents who have to juggle between work life and home life, my parents were
able to be present at all my sports games, plays, and other extracurricular activities. Everybody
knew my entire family, we have always been very attached to each other. Even though one day we
all have to leave home because of work or college, my family will always be the greatest and
valuable part of myself. My small town taught
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3. A Small Place
New Perspectives to Kincaid's A Small Place
If one wants an interesting but controversial read that is intellectually stimulating, A Small Place is
perfect. Critics both praise and condemn her text. To better understand Kincaid and her essay, one
should analyze the massive effects of British rule on Antigua, her intended audience, and the
childhood she experienced; specifically, the Postcolonial, Reader Response, and Biographical lenses.
The PostâColonial lens analyzes the effects of colonialism, so readers can better understand the
challenges Antiguans face as a consequence of colonial times. Antigua is full of the ancestors of
slaves, so the people living in Antigua postâemancipation did not receive the opportunity to develop
their own...show more content...
She has experienced racism firsthand, and has seen a government go from colonized to free to
immediately corrupt. Unlike nativeâborn European and Americans, She has attachments towards a
foreign island, and these attachments contribute to her anger and strong opinion on the subjects
she writes about in ASP. Kincaid seems to have always disliked her british connections, despite
her childhood revolving "... almost completely around England..." (Kincaid 33.) As a child, all
she ever knew was Western culture, English culture specifically. She grew up being taught to
celebrate English holidays and to recite "Rule Brittania." However, even at a young age, she
recognized that she is not a Briton, and she recalled in an interview, "...I used to say that we
weren't Britons, we were slaves," (475.) Her recognition of the clear social distinctions that still
existed then is smart and demonstrates her early grasp of the concept of social equality.At this
early age she knows but does not fully understand the inequality between her and the English. The
social inequality she experienced was racism, though she and other Antiguans simply thought the
racism they experienced was bad manners. In an interview, Kincaid recalled a memory about a
racist teacher, "...she told these girls over and over again to stop behaving as if they were monkeys
just out of trees. No one ever dreamed that the word for any of this was
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4. A Small Place Analysis
Jamaica Kincaid's novel A Small Place is a fictional novel about her life growing up on an island that
has been imperialised by the British. Jamaica Kincaid shows acrimony to the colonization of her
country, towards the corrupt government that has stunted the growth of her country, towards the
white people that took Antigua in their hands and molded it into something embryonic. The
dictionary defines third world as "the underdeveloped nations of the world, especially those with
widespread poverty," with this description, Antigua will be classified as a third world country after
achieving their independence from the British. A Small Place reveals that postâcolonial Antigua is
still pinned by a form of slavery through the nation's poor economy, government corruption, and the
impoverished Antiguans. The poor economy and corrupt government are hand in hand to help create
the impoverished Antiguans.
The corrupt government of Antigua restricts their citizens ability to buy specific goods, like cars,
in order to benefit the people working in the government, "banks are encouraged by the
government to make loans available for cars, but loans for houses not so easily available; and if
you ask again why, you will be told that the two main car dealerships in Antigua are owned in part or
outright by ministers in government" (Kincaid 7). The government forces the banks to make it
easier for the purchase of cars that are partly owned by the ministers of the Antiguan government so
they
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