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Chapter 2
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Small Place, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Slavery, Colonialism, and Independence
Racism and White Supremacy
Tourism and Empathy
The Local and The Global
Rot and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
One day while visiting Antigua, Kincaid stands in the street in and looks around herself and asks if Antigua is better off under self-rule than colonialism. The very fact that she asks this question indicates the situation’s direness: the government is corrupt, and its ministers are thieves. The library crystalizes this question for her, because after years, the government has not repaired or replaced it. The current library sits on the second floor of a run-down storefront. The old library, in contrast, was extremely beautiful, with its yellow walls, its wide porch, its windows open to admit the fresh smell of the sea, and its rows and rows of quiet, orderly bookshelves.
At the beginning of the third section, Kincaid uncovers the impetus for the book itself: she visits Antigua, sees signs of the rot and corruption that have taken root since the end of colonial rule in the fate of the library, and decides to investigate why this has happened. Downshifting from the global questions about tourism and colonialism in the first two sections to the very specific example of the public library in the Antiguan capital may feel like a radical shift in tone. But in doing so, Kincaid asks readers to think about how the morally corrupt tourist industry in the present grows out of the colonialism of the past. Because Antigua has shifted from colony to independent nation relatively recently—and within Kincaid’s lifetime—it becomes a rich site in which to explore these links. And within the already-small place of Antigua itself, the fate of the library focuses these threads of commentary and exploration into one burning focal point. Kincaid hints at the colonialist perspective, which would likely interpret the beauty of the old, colonial library as representing the order and peace of colonial rule, especially compared to current social and political disorder. But her own relationship to the library remains far more complex. The old library also represents the cultural domination of the colonizers, who exercised control in part through imposing their language onto Antiguans. In a way, then, Kincaid’s use of the library as a symbol for the devolution of Antigua enacts her complaint about her inability to explore her people’s oppression except in English. She loves the library for giving her the foundation of knowledge and language to explore the fate of Antigua in writing. But at the same time, the library also represents the limitations that colonizers have placed on the expression, culture, and freedom of their colonial subjects.
Themes
The librarians in the new library often can’t locate the books patrons want, either because inadequate storage space forces them to store many books in cardboard boxes or because the quality of Antiguans’ education seems to have declined since the country achieved independence. Kincaid notes that young people seem to speak English “as if it were their sixth language,” and she feels embarrassed watching youths in a “Teenage Pageant” unable to answer simple questions about themselves in cogent language.
If the old library suggests the colonial authorities’ power and control of Antiguans, the new library perfectly captures the chaos and dysfunction of the independent government—especially its lack of concern for services that benefit the public. Since this doesn’t enrich any government ministers, Kincaid implies, none of them care about its fate. The lack of regard for the library itself mirrors government ministers’ lack of investment in education. Kincaid’s complaints about the improper language of the youth points toward her vexed relationship with the English language—although she rails against being constrained to use the language of her oppressors in earlier sections, she also clings to the power of language as a means of looking at (and possibly changing) the world. Therefore, she worries about the declining skills of younger generations.
Themes
Like the library itself, the head librarian has changed over the years. Kincaid remembers her as “imperious and stuck up,” but now she appears apologetic and desperate. The people from the Mill Reef Club will contribute money for repairing the old library—but not to make the new one more useable. The Mill Reef residents love the old Antigua, just like Kincaid—but they have very different “old” Antiguas in mind.
The librarian shows how the end of colonialism didn’t necessarily free Antigua—instead, it made it dependent on a different set of outsiders and their wealth. The nominal control she had over the library under the colonial system disappeared after “The Earthquake,” and now she must beg for funding from tourists. Remember that the Mill Reef Club was founded by white tourists who wanted to enjoy Antigua without having to mix with local (Black) Antiguans socially, and so their involvement always carries a hint of racism and potential white supremacy. Their ability to hold up the project carries a subtle reminder of their influential wealth, especially compared to the Antiguan government—let alone average Antiguan citizens.
Themes
Kincaid remembers spending time at the library. She would go on Saturday afternoons to sit, read, and to feel sorry for herself in a child-like way. She had finished the book in the children’s section by the age of nine. She remembers the librarian watching her carefully to make sure she didn’t steal books or take out more than her allowance. Kincaid’s deeply personal connection with the old library explains why looking at the crumbling façade of the building—which now houses a carnival troupe—inspires her to consider the state of post-independence Antigua and ask why Mill Reef Club residents should have such a say over the library’s future.
Kincaid’s history with the library suggests the power that language and literature have over her personally and helps readers to understand her rage over being forced to use English (the language of her oppressors) to communicate both her love for and disappointment in Antigua, as well as her hatred for (but dependence upon) the lessons of the people who subjugated, colonized, and enslaved her ancestors. Colonialism has a long legacy, even after independence, and the effects of racism are difficult to root out of a place.
Themes
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Kincaid visits the daughter of the Mill Reef Club’s founder. This woman has a vested interest in restoring the old library—but also a reputation for disliking Antiguans who aren’t her servants or employees. She tells Kincaid that she always encourages her “girls”—the grown-up women who work for her in her various tourist businesses—to use the library. And she complains about government corruption: anyone can come from anywhere with enough money and get what they want from it. Kincaid senses that this woman takes pleasure in pointing out to a Black woman and native Antiguan how poorly the native, Black Antiguan government runs the country. And anyway, while she wants to help restore the library, she’s not sure if it’s possible. Someone might be about to redevelop that part of town.
Kincaid represents this woman as a prototypical example of the Mill Reef residents as neo-colonizers. The woman’s casual dismissal of her employees as her “girls” smacks of the history of slavery, in which white people claimed the right to own other (Black) human beings. And it points toward the casual assumption of cultural supremacy on the part of colonizers and enslavers, since the Mill Reef woman thinks of and presumably treats her adult employees like children. She also exemplifies the (white) outsider’s perspective on Antigua that Kincaid has invoked throughout the book when she claims that the native (Black) Antiguans lack the sophistication to run their country as effectively as their former colonizers did.
Themes
Kincaid considers trying to talk to the Minister of Culture. But he’s out of town, and anyway, she suspects that this meeting would have been fruitless. Her mother gained some notoriety on the island for her strong political convictions and once insulted him for stealing stamps from Redonda. Kincaid isn’t quite sure what this meant; Redonda is a distant, barren island that the English included in the colony—and then nation—of Antigua along with Barbuda. The Condrington family, which exploited and sold enslaved persons, originally settled Barbuda. But back to Kincaid’s mother and her insult. Once, the government issued stamps for Redonda. Someone made a lot of money from this, but no one knows who. The government and its decisions—what stamps to print, what they look like, what events to celebrate as national holidays—are opaque.
Redonda points to the past and the present moment in Antigua. In the past, it shows the often cavalier attitudes of colonizers toward their subjects, as it doesn’t make social or political sense to lump Redonda with Antigua. If there was a reason, Kincaid implies, it must have had to do with the interest of slaveholders like the Condringtons. In the present, a lack of clarity and oversight in the government of Redonda allows for grift and abuse of power. The English enriching themselves by claiming control over tiny islands in the Caribbean Sea sets the example for government ministers to sell Redondan stamps to enrich themselves.
Themes
In a small place like Antigua, Kincaid explains, even small events become larger than life, oppressive and overly determinant of the direction of society. People from a small place struggle to understand themselves in the context of a larger picture while at the same time resisting the exact, complete account of the events that shape their society and lives. A complete account requires considering, questioning, and judging events. And a division of time into “the Past, the Present, and the Future,” which the inhabitants of a small place seem to lack. The feel past events more vividly than present ones; they undertake actions in the present without consideration of the future.
In Kincaid’s eyes, Antigua’s small physical size and location in the vast blue ocean contribute to making it a “small place.” So too does the way in which its history has taken autonomy from its people. The “native” Antiguans primarily descend from formerly enslaved people; according to Kincaid, their communal history of subjugation and exploitation makes it hard for them both to take an active role in their society and to reflect upon the reasons why they struggle to do so. They thus exist in a sort of timeless limbo.
Themes
Kincaid sees this absence of the bigger picture and fluid sense of time in the way Antiguans talk about slavery as a series of bad things that ended with emancipation. They talk about emancipation so frequently that it seems like a current event, rather than a historical event. And even while they celebrate emancipation, Antiguans hold the Hotel Training School, where locals learn to be modern-day servants in the tourist sector, in high regard. Kincaid thinks no one can see the relationship between the historical institution of slavery and the modern institution of the Hotel Training School or between the historical institution of slavery and their corrupt government. In slave narratives, almost no one names their captor. And in Antigua, complaints about the corrupt government conveniently omit the fact that Antiguans have allowed one government to retain power for 15 of the last 20 years of independence.
Lacking the perspective to understand the weight of history or fully see how it affects their present lives doesn’t mean that Antiguans do not know the facts of their history; everyone on the island understands the role that colonialism and slavery played in the foundation of their country and in the lives of their ancestors. But without a global perspective (like the one Kincaid feels she gained by leaving the island), modern Antiguans don’t seem to see the direct connections between the colonialism of the past and the tourism industry of the present—both of which grant outsized privilege and power to outsiders—or between slavery and the tourism industry, which continues to exploit the undervalued labor of Black Antiguan workers. And while the foundational sins of colonialism, racism and slavery play an important role in laying the foundation for these modern problems, the learned passivity of Antiguans, who permit a corrupt government to remain in power, contributes as well.
Themes
Antiguans don’t just domesticate world-changing events into the everyday. They also blow mundane happenings into events, like an argument springing up at the market which turns into an enduring feud. In this small place, the event and the everyday exist in a state of constant flux, and this makes it hard for the people who live there to make sense of their history, their society, and the way they live. Kincaid looks at Antigua and wonders if Antiguans’ confusion of past and present and conflation of the trivial with the important make them naïve, sublime performance artists, or lunatics.
Lack of perspective goes in both directions, and Kincaid suggests that Antiguans’ struggle to contextualize their experiences with the history of their island and its people arises in part from their inordinate attention on minor events and happenings. These distract them from seeing the truly important connections. And because this disconnect between past and present is so disconcerting, Kincaid can’t decide whether it arises from genuine confusion or extreme denial.
Themes
Kincaid sees naivete, performed astonishment, and lunacy in Antiguans’ complaints about the corruption in the government, including increasingly privatized beaches; a Syrian national owning the largest car dealership; government ministers benefiting financially from the sale of Japanese luxury cars; the fact that Vere Cromwell Bird’s son owns a cable television company and adds his lines to public utility poles free of charge; government ministers owning many of the businesses patronized by the government; the Prime Minister’s friends openly running a brothel and other ministers trafficking drugs; and that Antiguan banks host dirty money from abroad (and these banks also often enrich government ministers).
Much of the government’s corruption happens in the open, where everyone can see it, and Kincaid lists a myriad of moderate and extreme examples. Some of these reflect concerns about colonialism, like the wealth and influence of people born outside of Antigua—some of whom are now naturalized citizens and others of whom remain foreign nationals transferring huge amounts of wealth out of Antigua. Yet, in the face of these abuses, no one seems to take a stand for political morality.
Themes
The Antiguan banks borrow from the Swiss model, and this reminds Kincaid of a friend who recently traveled to Switzerland and came back impressed with Switzerland’s cleanliness and superiority. But she neglects to ask how the Swiss pay for their superior life, although it’s common knowledge that dictators, tyrants, and criminal kingpins make a habit of depositing their ill-gotten gains in Swiss bank accounts. People revere the Swiss for their banks, their watches, and their neutrality; money and time are both neutral commodities.
Yet again, Kincaid points out how many of the ills and abuses in modern Antigua mirror those in other places. No one complains about Swiss corruption, even though their world-renowned banks often shelter criminals’ ill-gotten wealth. Because the Swiss have a high standard of living (and, Kincaid implies, are white), people usually ignore potential corruption in their system. In contrast, a history of racism and white supremacy predisposes people to condemn Antigua for trying out the same tactics—albeit less successfully.
Themes
Kincaid notes the way the government accepts bribes to allow American mobsters to run casinos on Antigua, since all West Indian countries seem to want casinos. The government helped circumvent the United Nations’ embargo on ammunition for the apartheid government of South Africa. It sold irradiated meat. It borrows large sums from rich Antiguans and foreign nationals. Foreign nationals own large plots of land and buildings, which they lease to the Antiguan government at exorbitant prices. Native Antiguans despise them as “foreigners,” and even though many of them have Antiguan citizenship, they haven’t cultivated a true presence on the island with any cultural institutions.
Kincaid refuses to let American readers off the hook for their country’s role in Antigua. And government ministers who can run off to America when the need arises sound much more like tourists and the despised foreign nationals whose lack of true social and cultural ties to Antigua renders them unconcerned about the lives and fates of those too poor and disenfranchised to escape. And this callousness extends to the fate of other former colonial subjects. The UN embargo Antigua circumvented was designed to keep certain weapons out of the hands of the white minority government of South Africa, which brutally repressed Black Africans through political disenfranchisement and outright violence between the 1940s and the 1990s.
Themes
Murders go unsolved in Antigua. A government minister investigating his colleagues for financial mismanagement died, electrocuted trying to open his refrigerator door. One year, two Acting Governor Generals died in quick succession; one was electrocuted at the home of a foreign national. The other became publicly ill at a funeral. And although the doctors said he died due to heart failure, everyone suspects poison. An $11 million grant from France vanished without a trace. Government ministers own all the media outlets and never allow airtime to opposition parties. The government built a failed oil refinery, enriching a foreigner who did “bad things” in the process. This same foreigner now wants to gift Antigua a museum and library. Another foreigner outbid the government for important historical documents, then made a big show of presenting them to the government as a gift. Most government ministers have American green cards.
Kincaid’s list continues, and she forces her readers to look at the mess of modern Antigua. Earlier, she said that the only way her rage over the history of colonialism, racism, subjugation, and exploitation could dissipate would be for colonialism, racism, subjugation, and exploitation never to have happened. As her list of corruption continues, she forces readers to acknowledge the truly astonishing degree of dysfunction in Antigua. And she offers continual reminders of the ways this dysfunction grows directly out of colonialism and slavery. Even the colonial authorities cannot escape the chaos that their selfish and immoral drive to rule the world has created. And even when foreigners try to help, they do so in ways that infantilize Antiguans and deprive them of control over the narrative of their own history.
Themes
Not everyone in the government is corrupt, or at least not on this scale. But honesty reaps the reward of poverty. Honest government ministers have to make a living driving taxis when their party loses power, or they die as paupers. The scale of government corruption becomes a monument to rottenness that Antiguans point out almost as if it is a tourist attraction.
If a history of exploitation and abuse provides the long-term explanation for Antiguan political and social dysfunction, a more immediate cause lies in the simple fact that honesty and plain dealing tend to lead to poverty. The situation has become so entrenched that Antiguans treat corruption like an act of nature which, like The Earthquake, wreaks unavoidable and irreparable damage.
Themes
Kincaid relates an important event in the history of Antigua, the founding of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union in 1939. Eventually, it became a political party that demanded the right to vote, returning the ownership of Antiguan land to Antiguans and demanding self-rule. The president of this union eventually became Premier and then Prime Minister; he has headed the government for 25 of the 30 years that Antiguans have had some form of self-rule. Sometimes Vere Cornwall Bird seems like a new George Washington; at other times he seems like the disgraced head of an American union imprisoned for embezzling its funds. An opposition Prime Minister interrupted Bird’s rule for one five-year term before losing his reelection bid. Once back in power, Bird had him arrested, charged, and jailed for profiting from his government office.
Another proximate cause of Antiguan corruption lies in the character of the man that Antiguans chose to head their government. Antiguans’ mixed feelings about Bird—whom they see as alternately a savior and a criminal—mirror Kincaid’s vexed sense of anger and nostalgia for aspects of colonial rule. Moreover, while Antigua’s present corruption grows from past abuses—especially colonialism and slavery—Antiguans know this history and could, potentially, make different choices in the present. They remain accountable to some extent for their current situation, even if the greater share belongs to the colonialists and slaveholders who exploited their ancestors and trained them to be passive.
Themes
Prime Minister Bird started out as a bookkeeper for a merchant-importer and banker. Eventually, his boss became suspicious because Bird seemed more prosperous than his salary would warrant. And when the merchant-importer asked to see the books, Bird grabbed them, ran to a nearby bakery, and tossed them into the oven to be consumed by flames. People in Antigua connect this event to his elbowing out the original, honest leaders of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union and the eventual debasement of the free Antiguan government. Bird treats the government like his own personal business and seems to expect his family to profit from it; two of his sons run the Treasury, Tourism and Public Works departments. It seems that a family so tied to the government—and in charge of what little military force this island has—might not relinquish their power willingly.
Although people knew about Bird’s corrupt character before he came to political power, Kincaid suggests that most Antiguans want to avoid responsibility for allowing him to hold office for so long. And, after so many years of avoiding accountability, Bird treats the government like a family business and the country like his personal possession.
Themes
A similar scenario—a political family running the government like a family business—played out in Haiti, where Françios “Papa Doc” Duvalier seized control of the government and lived an opulent, corrupt life of power before he died and his son, “Baby Doc,” succeeded him. But perhaps Antigua will be spared this event, Antiguans say—one of Bird’s sons has no apparent desire to rule while the other one has a terminal illness. Instead, they imagine (or hope) someone like Maurice Bishop—a political revolutionary from Grenada—will materialize in Antigua.
The nepotism (when those in power show favor toward their relations and friends) in the Antiguan government mirrors that in other former colonies—other small places. Kincaid invokes two examples of strongman leaders that show how narrow Antiguans’ political imaginations have become. In Haiti, “Papa Doc” Duvalier came to power in an open election but then turned into a dictator. Haiti thus traded autocratic rule by colonial authorities for autocratic rule from within. In Grenada, Maurice Bishop seized control of the government with aims including Black liberation and improving the lives of the common people. Yet, his grip on power alarmed others in Grenada leading to his arrest and execution. These examples suggest that as long as Antiguans remain content to take a passive role in their country and its politics, their hopes for a stable, functional government remain slim.
Themes
