Post Colonial Lit & A Small Place - Essay Example

With no power to launch a counter attack on any fronts, Antiguans just succumbed to the pressure. The natural process of cultural development of Antigua came to a dead halt. The nation lost the equilibrium. The power of colonization is so intense that it has the capacity to totally obliterate any culture that it encounters on the way and it leads to economic, cultural, and social and above all the slavery of the minds of the people. That is true of Antigua. The British had created a rosy picture of standard of life before the combustible younger generation of Antigua.

The local populace had been experiencing for hundreds of years the impact of British culture, tradition and power and the process of slow subversion continued. The middle class was attracted by the promises and wealth-generating capability of the capitalist state like Britain. As for morals, the British were no match as compared to the standard of Antiguans. The presence of the British in different segments in the life of Antiguans is being experienced, even when they have left the country for good.

Indirect colonization in the segments of culture and economy is going on unabated and unchecked, unfortunately though. Kincaid treats the arrival of the tourist the post-colonial era in Antigua in an interesting and thought-provoking style. She articulates that the tourist does not arrive with an intention to exploit. But he does expect to be treated in a preferential manner. Is it superiority complex? It is so; even though the tourist may not say it openly. He has come to a country to spend his disposable wealth and to enjoy.

How do the locals react to the arrival of the tourists in their country? Kincaid explains their attitude with lots of sarcasm: “An ugly thing, that is what you are when you become a tourist, an ugly empty thing, a stupid thing, a piece of rubbish pausing here and there to gaze at this and taste that, and it will never occur to you that the people who inhabit the place in which you have just paused cannot stand you, that behind their closed doors they laugh at your strangeness.”(17)The host country, lacks in the areas of industrial development and other wealth-generating infrastructure, wants such tourists, as they bring money and employment to the locals.

So, the tourism industry does not have a national goal or destination in Antigua. It develops like a service industry to cater to the ethnocentric demands on this country and contributing to the further advancement of cultural colonialism. Colonists are ruling from outside, without the liability of the governance of the territory of Antigua. This is a small but intimidating book, which sets the sociologists, economists and the politicians thinking. She provides the under-represented version of what happened in Antigua, which is also true of most of the colonized countries.

She attacks the Europeans viciously for all the evil they heaped upon the people of Antigua, and she has own perspective of judging the past and visualizing the present and the future. She tones town her attack and makes the realistic assessment about the plight of the people of Antigua thus: “Of course, the whole thing is, once you cease to be a master, once you throw off your master's yoke, you are no longer human rubbish, you are just a human being, and all the things that adds up to. So, too with the