A Small Place

by

Jamaica Kincaid

Vere Cornwall Bird Character Analysis

Vere Cornwall Bird was the First Premier and Prime Minister of Antigua, where he headed the government with one brief interruption from 1967 to 1994. Bird came to political prominence as a founding member and early leader of the Antiguan Trades and Labour Union, which later evolved into a political party. In A Small Place, Bird and his leadership exemplify the rot and corruption that characterizes the modern Antiguan government and which the book sees as the direct result of the lessons taught by the history of northern European colonialism and slavery.

Vere Cornwall Bird Quotes in A Small Place

The A Small Place quotes below are all either spoken by Vere Cornwall Bird or refer to Vere Cornwall Bird. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Slavery, Colonialism, and Independence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3  Quotes

[A]n institution that is often celebrated in Antigua is the Hotel Training School, a school that teaches Antiguans how to be good servants, how to be a good nobody, which is what a servant is. In Antigua, people cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and their celebration of the Hotel Training School [… or] between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and the fact that they are governed by corrupt men, or that these corrupt men have given their country away to corrupt foreigners […]. In accounts of the capture and enslavement of black people almost no slave ever mentions who captured and delivered him or her to the European master. In accounts of their corrupt government, Antiguans neglect to say that in twenty years of one form of self-government or another, they have, with one five-year exception, placed power in the present government.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), The Tourist, Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:

The people who go into running the government were not always such big thieves; nor have they always been so corrupt. They took things, but it was on a small scale. For instance, if the government built some new housing to be sold to people, then a minister or two would get a few of the houses for themselves […] Everybody knew about this. Some of the ministers were honest. One of them, a famous one in Antigua, a leader of the Trade and Labour Union movement, even died a pauper. Another minister, when his party lost power, had to drive a taxi. It is he, the taxi-driving ex-minister who taught the other ministers a lesson […] All the ministers have “green cards”—a document that makes them legal residents of the United States of America.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), The Tourist, Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

And so they anchor the merchant-importer’s books being burned to the event of the original, honest leaders of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union being maneuvered out of the union they founded and dishonest people taking their place; and they anchor that to the decline of one sort of colonialism and its debasement and its own sort of corruption; and they anchor that to this man, this Prime Minister, who from time to time had seemed like a good man, so well could he spell out the predicament that average Antiguans found themselves in.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire A Small Place LitChart as a printable PDF.
A Small Place PDF

Vere Cornwall Bird Quotes in A Small Place

The A Small Place quotes below are all either spoken by Vere Cornwall Bird or refer to Vere Cornwall Bird. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Slavery, Colonialism, and Independence Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3  Quotes

[A]n institution that is often celebrated in Antigua is the Hotel Training School, a school that teaches Antiguans how to be good servants, how to be a good nobody, which is what a servant is. In Antigua, people cannot see a relationship between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and their celebration of the Hotel Training School [… or] between their obsession with slavery and emancipation and the fact that they are governed by corrupt men, or that these corrupt men have given their country away to corrupt foreigners […]. In accounts of the capture and enslavement of black people almost no slave ever mentions who captured and delivered him or her to the European master. In accounts of their corrupt government, Antiguans neglect to say that in twenty years of one form of self-government or another, they have, with one five-year exception, placed power in the present government.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), The Tourist, Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 55-56
Explanation and Analysis:

The people who go into running the government were not always such big thieves; nor have they always been so corrupt. They took things, but it was on a small scale. For instance, if the government built some new housing to be sold to people, then a minister or two would get a few of the houses for themselves […] Everybody knew about this. Some of the ministers were honest. One of them, a famous one in Antigua, a leader of the Trade and Labour Union movement, even died a pauper. Another minister, when his party lost power, had to drive a taxi. It is he, the taxi-driving ex-minister who taught the other ministers a lesson […] All the ministers have “green cards”—a document that makes them legal residents of the United States of America.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), The Tourist, Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:

And so they anchor the merchant-importer’s books being burned to the event of the original, honest leaders of the Antigua Trades and Labour Union being maneuvered out of the union they founded and dishonest people taking their place; and they anchor that to the decline of one sort of colonialism and its debasement and its own sort of corruption; and they anchor that to this man, this Prime Minister, who from time to time had seemed like a good man, so well could he spell out the predicament that average Antiguans found themselves in.

Related Characters: Jamaica Kincaid (speaker), Vere Cornwall Bird
Related Symbols: Antigua
Page Number: 71
Explanation and Analysis: