ESSAY CEMETERY

I The speaker/narrator addresses a tourist to Antigua. She points out discrepancies in the experience of being a tourist and living there. She walks through the tourist experience, from landing in Antigua to experiencing its various holiday offerings. She describes the corruption in the government, the bad education and health systems and relics from the day of British rule. She lays out the reasons for tourism and the difference between tourism and home life. II She tells of Antigua during British occupation. White people came and flourished in business, and excluded the Angtiguans or made them servants, which made them offensive to the natives. The natives thought the whites were being rude but years later the author came to understand that they were being racist. They partook in British traditions without understanding them and assumed that England was nicer than the Englishmen they encountered. The English are horrible because they took that which was not theirs to tak...

Jamaica Kincaid Style ·        Addressing the reader ·        Run on sentences ·        Sarcasm ·        Accusatory tone, hostility Themes ·        Discrepancy between living in Antigua and coming there as a tourist ·        Difference between Antigua and America ·        Cheating tourists ·        Search for authenticity ·        Government corruption in Antigua ·        The paradoxical influence of the british over Antiguans – they wanted and got independence but have deteriorated and become corrupted since ·        Racial guilt transferred down generations ·        Affluent people are forei...

Mary Rowlandson. Image source Devices and Style ·          Some deviations from the subject In her younger years she lay under much trouble upon spiritual accounts, till it pleased God to make that precious scripture take hold of her heart, "And he said unto me, my Grace is sufficient for thee" (2 Corinthians 12.9). More than twenty years after, I have heard her tell how sweet and comfortable that place was to her. ·          Philosophizing When we are in prosperity, Oh the little that we think of such dreadful sights, and to see our dear friends, and relations lie bleeding out their heart-blood upon the ground. ·          Chapters titled "Removes"- "The First Remove" etc. ·          Quoting Scripture I may say, as it is in Psalm 38.5-6 "My wounds stink and are corrupt, I am troubled, I am bowed down ...

Mary Rowlandson.  Image source In February 1675 the first attack by the Indians of Lancaster occurred. They set fire to the dwellings of Lancaster and kill its inhabitants. They set fire to Mary's house, and when Mary and her children try to leave her house they are shot at. They finally have to, upon which her brother-in-law die from a previous wound. She herself is shot as is Sarah, the six-year old child in her arms, and a child of her sister's murdered by a blow to the head. Hearing of this, her sister prays to go with them and is promptly shot too. The Indians take the children one way, and Mary another, promising that they would not hurt her if she came with them. Of the 37 of them in her house, only one evaded both death and captivity. 24 are taken alive as captives.  The First Remove The first night in captivity is miserable. She is denied sleep in an English-made dwelling. Still in the ravaged town, the Indians celebrate all night, singing and dancing ...

Because of the non-linear (flashback-filled) storytelling, I decided to summarize the plot using bullet points instead of conventional paragraphs. The tense of the bulleted sentences indicate the time of occurrence of the item - past or present. The order of the bullet points correspond to the sequence in which the actions appeared in the book. Numbers in parentheses (n) indicate page numbers. I can't tell the edition - the title page of Chapter 1 begins on page 9. ------ The book begins with an epigraph attributed to HITLER: "The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human" . One/The Sheik ·        Mala and Vladek don't get along ·        Vladek had two heart attacks ·        Art's mother is dead ·        Art asks Vladek to tell him Vladek's story ·        Vladek criticizes Art about the way he spends his time ...