A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, Essay Example

Zadie Smith’s The Embassy of Cambodia

The primary narrative in this novel is in the third person to speak about Fatou, a young Ivorian woman who serves as a de facto slave and a nanny for a wealthy Middle East family that has a large home in Willesden (Ghuman). At some point, another voice, in first-person is used. For instance, in the first paragraph, it reads; “It’s a surprise, to us all. The Embassy of Cambodia!” (Smith 10). This voice is eventually realized to be that of affectation as the narrator is an elder who stands on the retirement home’s balcony, which is across the street from the Embassy. The narrator exclaims, “I have been chosen to speak for them.” The narrator explains that the people of Willesden did not choose him. This is evident in the book, where the narrator states, “though they did not choose me and must wonder what gives me the right” (Smith 15).

The third-person perspective is rife within the novel to show the life of Fatou, the domestic worker for the Derewal family. The third-person perspective shows her life as she swims in the pool and recollects her life in Ghana. The narrator shows that Fatou puts her trust in a man who studies a business degree at a college in London. Further, the narrator shows us Fatou’s life during the Summer Olympics in 2012 and offers an immediate context in which the story occurs (Smith). For instance, the narrator explains that some are critical of the local scope of Fatou’s interests in the Cambodian woman from The Embassy of Cambodia, although the people of Willesden show some sympathy with her attitude. It does not take long for the reader to comprehend that the first person plural narrator is a specific resident of Willesden who is speaking on behalf of her community.

“Of the Old and New People of Willesden I speak,” (Smith 16). She explains that she has also been chosen to speak for them even though she was not chosen by the people, they wonder what gives her the right. When the narrator catches a glimpse of her on the balcony which overlooks The Embassy of Cambodia, the narrator approaches herself from the outside to describe her figure in first-person plural. Therefore, she is seen as an elderly lady speaking on behalf of the community. Fatou’s relationship with the narrator is hence evidenced in the form of gossip, observation, and speculation inspired by the elderly lady’s randomly seeing Fatou. “Many of us walked past her that afternoon, or spotted her as we rode the bus, or through the windscreens of our cars, or from our balconies” (Smith 22). Therefore, it is this sense of wonder that Fatou created within Willesden which exemplifies The Embassy of Cambodia.

The first-person narrative point of view offers the reader an experience of the narrator’s perspective of the plot, characters, and events and also includes the narrator’s experiences, thoughts, feelings, motivations, and observations. The first-person plural creates a bond of collective moments since activists are reliant upon rumors, then listen to them and spread them, and afterwards decide to act. The political narrative of collective action can hence be spread using the first-person plural. On the other hand, a personal perspective of an individual can apply the first-person singular. Notably, a book that is written in first-person seeks to evoke a situation where the protagonist explains their experiences or a peripheral character’s explanation of the protagonist’s story. In the novel, the first-person is used by the narrator to express their feelings. For instance, “The excitement I felt when I realized, all of a sudden, that I was not so far away from The Embassy of Cambodia in Istanbul (it is a few minutes-walk away from the Park)” (Smith 22). This statement was rather personal and singular, giving a feeling of excitement. Hence, the first-person narration thus allows the reader to visualize how their character thinks and also visualize their experiences around them.

If the story is narrated in the omniscient third-person, the narrator relates with what these characters are doing and thinking, and is not limited in regards to the presentation made to the reader. A third-person omniscient is the most flexible and open point-of-view available to writers. As the name explains, an omniscient narrator sees everything and knows everything and while the narration may be outside of anyone’s character, the narrator may occasionally touch on the consciousness of one or more characters.

Kincaid’s A Small Place

The reader is addressed throughout A Small Place, as “you”. She describes the typical tourist as a person who does not inherently understand the place (Baleiro and Quintero 11). A typical tourist according to Kincaid is a white, European, Canadian, or United States middle-class person who has assumptions and attitudes that are common with people from these regions. They share characters that are relatable to a bourgeois Western tourist who show domineering and comfortable characters. They are ignorant of local cultures and can also be described as callous. Kincaid explains that as a tourist, “you” have an ordinary life at home with individuals that love “you”. However, “your” travels’ motivation is from boredom and the quest to observe other people’s lives in a beautiful region.

Kincaid expresses that a tourist is happy to visit a foreign country, hop into a taxi and ask for the price. When the price is quoted, “you” are happy as it is in the local currency and “you” are even dismayed by the low cost of transport within the country. “You” are unperturbed by the bad road network, as “you” exclaim, Oh, what a marvellous change these bad roads are from the splendid highways I am used to in North America (or worse Europe) (Kincaid 5).

Kincaid expresses that for “you” everything is about the lives of the local Antiguans concentrating on their clothes and personal habits seems interesting to “you”. Kincaid, thus, wants to emphasize that the lives of these individuals will always be opaque to an outsider, and will only concentrate on the “small place” they have opted to visit. She also expresses that these tourists are bound to miss the real significance of elements such as the giant mansions and the noisy Japanese cars (Kincaid 5).

She expresses that “you” are happy that “your” trip will not be ruined by rain- but fail to understand the complexities within the regions they visit, such as the lack of fresh water. Therefore, Kincaid feels that the tourists’ visit to Antigua is just a blatant strategy that the tourists use to get away from their boring lives at home, and come to a different place so that they “may be at home”. Therefore, to her, tourists are ugly people since they visit countries like Antigua, not to elevate the local people’s lives by offering them opportunities such as clean water, but to be vibrant and happy in the midst of people suffering from poverty and hard labor. These tourists visit these nations as mere distractions from the emptiness and boredom of their existence.

Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown

Virginia Woolf detests Charles Dickens writing according to sentiments shared in Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown. Woolf argues that there are issues within representation of character among Victorian and Edwardian writers. She argues that writers from these two eras failed in their characterization within their novels. She explains that a novel is a critical strategy to create a human character (Woolf 384). This situation that has not been remarkably approached by Charles Dickens, in David Copperfield. She argues that writers such as Charles Dickens have failed in the development of characters within the character-making process creating novels with soulless bodies that clog the readers’ minds (Woolf 383-384).

Woolf argues that “To disagree about character is to differ in the depths of the being” (Woolf 387). This precise centrality of character makes Edwardian writers’ failure to be so pronounced. Therefore, Woolf’s attention is focused on characterization and the portrayal of characters is central to the reader gaining an understanding of the historical changes taking place within a novel. Woolf explains the need to emphasize on being on the actual historical changes within human character and human relations to generate a believable character. Virginia Woolf argues that a Dickens novel is befitting to become a cluster of separate characters loosely attached together, in most cases, by arbitrary conventions that tend to detach and split the readers’ attention into different parts until they drop the book in despair (Bateman 180). She, however, explains that these problems are not evident in David Copperfield. She exemplifies the novel as a befitting emotional experience since it is his most autobiographical novel. She elaborately explains how the characters in David Copperfield have life flowing in them to evoke a feeling of gaiety, youth, and hope within a tumultuous environment in such a way that it brings the scattered components together to inspire one of Charles Dickens best novels of all time.

Woolf argues that Dickens was a seasonal writer which she likened to the ripening of fruits and sunshine, arguing that if Dickens was a seasonal writer. However, for David Copperfield, Woolf explains that Dickens did a good job. It was unlike the other novels which are inundated with a crowd of characters that barely develop to maturity as he seemingly throws an additional character whenever necessary. However, for David Copperfield, Woolf finds it ideal. Woolf’s assumptions about Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield are hence accurate considering that in the midst of criticism and analysis, the novel continues to inspire meaning (Dickens 10). Well, people are still even talking about David Copperfield, during Woolf’s lifetime, 40 years after Dickens death. People are still talking about his remarkable works of David Copperfield, almost 150 years after Dickens death.

Works Cited

Baleiro, Rita, and Sílvia Quinteiro. “A small place, by Jamaica Kincaid: envisioning literary tourism in Antigua.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 17.6 (2019): 676-688.

Bateman, Benjamin. “Train (ing) Modernism.” Transport in British Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2015. 185-198.

Dickens, Charles. “David Copperfield Part I.” E-book by Freeditorial. com. Retrieved from: https: // freeditorial. com / es / books / david-copperfield-part-1 (2016).

Ghuman, Jas. “The Embassy of Cambodia Review.” Literary Cultures 1.2 (2018).

Kincaid, Global Nativism In Jamaica. “Small Places.” The Ideologies of Lived Space in Literary Texts, Ancient and Modern (1988): 1-174.

Smith, Zadie. The Embassy of Cambodia. Penguin UK, 2013.

Woolf, Virginia. “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown. London: Hogarth, 1924.” British Library. Web 26 (2018).