A World 12 Miles Long and 9 Miles Wide (essay 3)
In today’s world, civilians can fly into outer space. It is expensive, and it requires extensive resources, but it is possible. Not long ago, traveling to Europe and other destinations within our own atmosphere was equally as difficult. Technology has come a long way in a very short time; travel has become easy and affordable, and consequently, the world is much smaller these days. Unfortunately, this sudden commercialization of travel has left us unprepared for the large influx of foreigners into our homelands. In her book, A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid highlights the negative relationship between natives and tourists in her own homeland of Antigua, and accordingly, the world at large.
In her piece, Kincaid says that, “a tourist is an ugly human being” (14), and she turns us into the ugly human beings she is describing. She begins by outlining our every thought and impression as our plane lands in Antigua, leaving nothing to our own discretion. Kincaid relates our trip from the airport to the hotel, describing the signs of social and economic stress apparent all around-- the damaged library, the dilapidated school, and the poorly equipped hospital-- but tells us that we “are tired of all this looking, and [we] want to reach [our] destination- [our] hotel, [our] room” (12). She makes it clear that these problems aren’t hidden, that they are easy to see if we’re looking, but since we are acting the part of tourists here, our thoughts are elsewhere. And Kincaid doesn’t stop at our behavior; she also dictates our appearance. She describes the “people just like [us],” as “incredibly unattractive, fat pastry-like-fleshed” (13) men and women, glaring deformities on the beautiful beaches. Regardless of whether or not we are like the people Kincaid is describing, she has stripped us of our own identities and given us the identities of the ugly tourists she sees every day in Antigua. This technique is offensive, but also very effective. As readers, we don’t want to be associated in any way with the stereotypical shallow, self-serving, camera-toting tourists Kincaid has forced us to become. We are forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of the natives’ disdain of tourists, because we ourselves are disgusted by our own images.
Although “a tourist is an ugly human being,” Kincaid does point out that he is not “an ugly person all the time.” The second tourists seek to leave what Kincaid perceives to be their happy, privileged lives, to seek an escape, they “make a leap from being that nice blob just sitting like a boob in [their] amniotic sac of the modern experience to being a person visiting heaps of death and ruin and feeling alive and inspired at the sight of it” (16). In our own homelands we are far removed from Antigua, and we are not expected to concern ourselves with its problems. But once we voluntarily place ourselves in Antigua, it is only right that we should, as guests to their country, take an interest in their culture. It is the rude and selfish attitude of tourists that Kincaid finds so unattractive; once we enter Antigua, we have a responsibility to learn about their culture and its troubles, and not dismiss them in our eagerness to escape our own.
Kincaid attempts to portray the tourist as a selfish being taking advantage of the beauty of Antigua while doing nothing to help fix its problems. However, she also reveals some less than flattering sides of the native Antiguans. Kincaid tells us that “the people who inhabit the place in which [we] have just passed cannot stand [us], that behind their closed doors they laugh at [our] strangeness” (17). If the willful ignorance of the tourist is “ugly,” is this malicious laughter not also “ugly”? Furthermore, Kincaid describes the ways in which the natives exploit the ignorance and gullibility of their visitors.
"Is the ground-up bottle glass in peanut sauce really a delicacy here, or will it do just what you think ground-up bottle glass will do? Is this rare, multicolored, snout-mouthed fish really an aphrodisiac, or will it cause you to fall asleep permanently?" (18)
We’re left to wonder along with all the other tourists. Native Antiguans, rather than welcoming and encouraging genuine interest in their culture, actively prevent it, exploiting the ignorance of foreigners for their own entertainment. Kincaid herself is a native belittling tourists throughout the entire excerpt. She attacks us, with our new identities as “ugly tourists,” almost from the first sentence of the piece, criticizing our every thought, our every reaction, showing no tolerance or patience for our foreign natures. In defining a tourist from the perspective of a native, Kincaid also exposes the judgmental native.
The depictions of the tourist and the native are extreme in A Small Place; Kincaid presents these extreme descriptions to lend power to her argument, but her descriptions are still effective; most tourists would exhibit at least some of the selfish behaviors she outlines, just as most natives would conform to their roles (as we “tourists” see them in our readings of the excerpt) to some extent as well. Even if we hate to admit it, we all recognize our own capacity to be the tourist Kincaid describes, lying on a beach, idly watching another culture surround us while making no attempt to understand it, and we can equally imagine being a native, preying on the ignorance of a foreigner for entertainment. It is difficult to accept these weaknesses in ourselves; however, no one can claim to beyond the scope of Kincaid’s description, “for every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere” (18).
Unfortunately, these weaknesses extend to encompass every society; the native Antiguans are not the only ones guilty of this spiteful behavior. New Yorkers, for example, are infamous for their treatment of tourists. They make rude comments about the overwhelmed tourists they see walking by with their necks craned in all directions and it is no secret that most New Yorkers will purposefully offer confusing or grossly misleading directions in hopes of getting people hopelessly lost. “Native” New Yorkers assume all tourists are bumbling idiots that know nothing about living in “the city.” New York is a city known the world over for its diversity of every kind, yet New Yorkers are still just as resentful as the Antiguans are when they encounter foreigners in their homeland. Kincaid’s depiction of the native is an accurate description of every native in the world. The situation in Antigua is similar to that in New York, is similar to that in Barcelona, is similar to that in Paris, is similar to that of everywhere. All around us, natives immediately reject tourists based on their stereotypes; it is a global problem running rampant through societies everywhere.
The global environment reflected in Kincaid’s book is not a pleasant one, and ironically, we are all at fault on both fronts. As tourists we don’t respect the native cultures we visit, and as natives we resent those who are different from us. We experience both sides of this relationship, so it is strange that the failings of these interactions are not more apparent to us in everyday life. However, this also means that we can begin to work to improve this situation from both ends. When we find ourselves traveling to a new place, we can strive to remain aware of our surroundings, to experience and gain some understanding of all aspects of the culture we are visiting, not just the pleasurable ones. We can be courteous to the country or culture hosting our visit, much the way we would be polite while visiting the home of a friend. Similarly, when we encounter tourists as we go about our daily business, we should act the part of a courteous host, treating them kindly, and without disdain. In this way, we can begin to scale the social barriers we have created; we can promote global awareness and understanding between cultures.
Jamaica Kincaid describes tourism with cutting precision in A Small Place; we all feel the bite of her words as we read. There is no mistaking her opinion of the pasty white vacationers that swoop down upon her home. However, we need to recognize that this is not a one-sided interaction. Both the inhospitable natives and the impolite tourists play active roles in preventing their understanding of each another. Antigua is “a world that is twelve miles long and nine miles wide” (9), but it accurately reflects the world at large. As technology becomes more advanced and the world continues to shrink, this relationship between foreigners and natives will become more and more strained. Soon we will all be neighbors in one global community. If we could begin harboring good native-tourist relations one place, one city at a time, perhaps even beginning with Antigua, and moved from one microcosm to the next, eventually we could eradicate these “ugly tourists” and “ugly natives” and replace them with intelligent, compassionate guests for travelers and welcoming natives as hosts.
In her piece, Kincaid says that, “a tourist is an ugly human being” (14), and she turns us into the ugly human beings she is describing. She begins by outlining our every thought and impression as our plane lands in Antigua, leaving nothing to our own discretion. Kincaid relates our trip from the airport to the hotel, describing the signs of social and economic stress apparent all around-- the damaged library, the dilapidated school, and the poorly equipped hospital-- but tells us that we “are tired of all this looking, and [we] want to reach [our] destination- [our] hotel, [our] room” (12). She makes it clear that these problems aren’t hidden, that they are easy to see if we’re looking, but since we are acting the part of tourists here, our thoughts are elsewhere. And Kincaid doesn’t stop at our behavior; she also dictates our appearance. She describes the “people just like [us],” as “incredibly unattractive, fat pastry-like-fleshed” (13) men and women, glaring deformities on the beautiful beaches. Regardless of whether or not we are like the people Kincaid is describing, she has stripped us of our own identities and given us the identities of the ugly tourists she sees every day in Antigua. This technique is offensive, but also very effective. As readers, we don’t want to be associated in any way with the stereotypical shallow, self-serving, camera-toting tourists Kincaid has forced us to become. We are forced to acknowledge the legitimacy of the natives’ disdain of tourists, because we ourselves are disgusted by our own images.
Although “a tourist is an ugly human being,” Kincaid does point out that he is not “an ugly person all the time.” The second tourists seek to leave what Kincaid perceives to be their happy, privileged lives, to seek an escape, they “make a leap from being that nice blob just sitting like a boob in [their] amniotic sac of the modern experience to being a person visiting heaps of death and ruin and feeling alive and inspired at the sight of it” (16). In our own homelands we are far removed from Antigua, and we are not expected to concern ourselves with its problems. But once we voluntarily place ourselves in Antigua, it is only right that we should, as guests to their country, take an interest in their culture. It is the rude and selfish attitude of tourists that Kincaid finds so unattractive; once we enter Antigua, we have a responsibility to learn about their culture and its troubles, and not dismiss them in our eagerness to escape our own.
Kincaid attempts to portray the tourist as a selfish being taking advantage of the beauty of Antigua while doing nothing to help fix its problems. However, she also reveals some less than flattering sides of the native Antiguans. Kincaid tells us that “the people who inhabit the place in which [we] have just passed cannot stand [us], that behind their closed doors they laugh at [our] strangeness” (17). If the willful ignorance of the tourist is “ugly,” is this malicious laughter not also “ugly”? Furthermore, Kincaid describes the ways in which the natives exploit the ignorance and gullibility of their visitors.
"Is the ground-up bottle glass in peanut sauce really a delicacy here, or will it do just what you think ground-up bottle glass will do? Is this rare, multicolored, snout-mouthed fish really an aphrodisiac, or will it cause you to fall asleep permanently?" (18)
We’re left to wonder along with all the other tourists. Native Antiguans, rather than welcoming and encouraging genuine interest in their culture, actively prevent it, exploiting the ignorance of foreigners for their own entertainment. Kincaid herself is a native belittling tourists throughout the entire excerpt. She attacks us, with our new identities as “ugly tourists,” almost from the first sentence of the piece, criticizing our every thought, our every reaction, showing no tolerance or patience for our foreign natures. In defining a tourist from the perspective of a native, Kincaid also exposes the judgmental native.
The depictions of the tourist and the native are extreme in A Small Place; Kincaid presents these extreme descriptions to lend power to her argument, but her descriptions are still effective; most tourists would exhibit at least some of the selfish behaviors she outlines, just as most natives would conform to their roles (as we “tourists” see them in our readings of the excerpt) to some extent as well. Even if we hate to admit it, we all recognize our own capacity to be the tourist Kincaid describes, lying on a beach, idly watching another culture surround us while making no attempt to understand it, and we can equally imagine being a native, preying on the ignorance of a foreigner for entertainment. It is difficult to accept these weaknesses in ourselves; however, no one can claim to beyond the scope of Kincaid’s description, “for every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere” (18).
Unfortunately, these weaknesses extend to encompass every society; the native Antiguans are not the only ones guilty of this spiteful behavior. New Yorkers, for example, are infamous for their treatment of tourists. They make rude comments about the overwhelmed tourists they see walking by with their necks craned in all directions and it is no secret that most New Yorkers will purposefully offer confusing or grossly misleading directions in hopes of getting people hopelessly lost. “Native” New Yorkers assume all tourists are bumbling idiots that know nothing about living in “the city.” New York is a city known the world over for its diversity of every kind, yet New Yorkers are still just as resentful as the Antiguans are when they encounter foreigners in their homeland. Kincaid’s depiction of the native is an accurate description of every native in the world. The situation in Antigua is similar to that in New York, is similar to that in Barcelona, is similar to that in Paris, is similar to that of everywhere. All around us, natives immediately reject tourists based on their stereotypes; it is a global problem running rampant through societies everywhere.
The global environment reflected in Kincaid’s book is not a pleasant one, and ironically, we are all at fault on both fronts. As tourists we don’t respect the native cultures we visit, and as natives we resent those who are different from us. We experience both sides of this relationship, so it is strange that the failings of these interactions are not more apparent to us in everyday life. However, this also means that we can begin to work to improve this situation from both ends. When we find ourselves traveling to a new place, we can strive to remain aware of our surroundings, to experience and gain some understanding of all aspects of the culture we are visiting, not just the pleasurable ones. We can be courteous to the country or culture hosting our visit, much the way we would be polite while visiting the home of a friend. Similarly, when we encounter tourists as we go about our daily business, we should act the part of a courteous host, treating them kindly, and without disdain. In this way, we can begin to scale the social barriers we have created; we can promote global awareness and understanding between cultures.
Jamaica Kincaid describes tourism with cutting precision in A Small Place; we all feel the bite of her words as we read. There is no mistaking her opinion of the pasty white vacationers that swoop down upon her home. However, we need to recognize that this is not a one-sided interaction. Both the inhospitable natives and the impolite tourists play active roles in preventing their understanding of each another. Antigua is “a world that is twelve miles long and nine miles wide” (9), but it accurately reflects the world at large. As technology becomes more advanced and the world continues to shrink, this relationship between foreigners and natives will become more and more strained. Soon we will all be neighbors in one global community. If we could begin harboring good native-tourist relations one place, one city at a time, perhaps even beginning with Antigua, and moved from one microcosm to the next, eventually we could eradicate these “ugly tourists” and “ugly natives” and replace them with intelligent, compassionate guests for travelers and welcoming natives as hosts.