Rhetorical Analysis Of On Seeing England For The First Time
Rhetorical Analysis of “On Seeing England for the First Time”
“On seeing England for the first time” by Jamaica Kincaid was published by Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. Kincaid believes that she is a product of a culture that was forced upon her. She describes how angry she feels growing up in Antigua with the dark shadow of England continually looming over her. Antigua is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493, the Spanish were replaced by the British in 1632. The British started to produce sugar cane on the island, and this production was supported by slavery. …show more content…
Ninety percent of the island’s population is black. The British ruled the island for more than three centuries, and as a consequence, everything and everyone in power who surrounded her were British.
The city where Kincaid grew up was built in British style, resembling such British cities as London.
The cars were made in England. People wore English fabric and dressed up in English fashion. Her dad wore a brown felt hat his entire life, even though they lived in a tropical island. This “British environment” was also present during her breakfast. The first phrase that she read in the mornings was “Made in England,” on the cocoa can and on the oat can. These three words were everywhere. Kincaid appears to have a strong ethos because she went through all the difficulties of colonial segregation.
Kincaid also talks about the way she was educated; at school the first thing that she had learned was the England map. It looked like a leg of mutton for her. Also, she used to sing hymns and recited poems about England. When she was a child, she knew so many things about England, but she had never been in England at that time. Kincaid described England was so detailed and very chauvinistic in some way. She is telling us how her environment influenced upon her to believe how great the old England was, and how much everyone around her adores the country. Kincaid uses anaphora, antithesis, metaphor, simile, and many other figures and syntactic manipulations. One could also take the question about the structure of her argument and expand that to a full analysis of her argument about the oppressiveness and invasiveness of colonialism and its eradication of those unfortunate enough to
be the subjects of the colonial control.
The essay talks about Kincaid’s opinion of England as a horrible and remarkably undesirable place. The conflict that is apparent in this essay is the idea of prejudice and how it affects can be so forceful and controlling. It is evident in this essay, that as people we have a tendency to hold grudges and make false assumptions based on stereotypes and generalizations. I suppose it could be a human flaw, but it is often times very difficult to overturn preconceived notions and see the good and charm of things when we have stubbornly determined something to be dreadful. Jamaica was upset by the way the English had created the slave trade and how in her eyes, the English see themselves in a superior form than others. This attitude causes Jamaica to generalize the entire country of England as rude, stuck up, racist, and arrogant. This simply goes to show that the word place can be associated with the culture and societal habits of even a small population that reside there.
Kincaid uses ethos strongly to establish her credibility with both a rhetorical audience and general public. Her argument could help us to understand the cross cultural influence occurred during the British colonization in Antigua and how that created a very low self-esteem in the habitants that were segregated in Antigua. This kind of feeling could become aggressive towards English people because of all the frustration, and hostility accompanied by a sense of being powerless to express these thoughts directly.
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“On seeing England for the first time” by Jamaica Kincaid was published by Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. Kincaid believes that she is a product of a culture that was forced upon her. She describes how angry she feels growing up in Antigua with the dark shadow of England continually looming over her. Antigua is an island in the West Indies, in the Leeward Islands of the Caribbean region, the main island of the country of Antigua and Barbuda. Antigua was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493, the Spanish were replaced by the British in 1632. The British started to produce sugar cane on the island, and this production was supported by slavery. …show more content…
Ninety percent of the island’s population is black. The British ruled the island for more than three centuries, and as a consequence, everything and everyone in power who surrounded her were British.
The city where Kincaid grew up was built in British style, resembling such British cities as London.
The cars were made in England. People wore English fabric and dressed up in English fashion. Her dad wore a brown felt hat his entire life, even though they lived in a tropical island. This “British environment” was also present during her breakfast. The first phrase that she read in the mornings was “Made in England,” on the cocoa can and on the oat can. These three words were everywhere. Kincaid appears to have a strong ethos because she went through all the difficulties of colonial segregation.
Kincaid also talks about the way she was educated; at school the first thing that she had learned was the England map. It looked like a leg of mutton for her. Also, she used to sing hymns and recited poems about England. When she was a child, she knew so many things about England, but she had never been in England at that time. Kincaid described England was so detailed and very chauvinistic in some way. She is telling us how her environment influenced upon her to believe how great the old England was, and how much everyone around her adores the country. Kincaid uses anaphora, antithesis, metaphor, simile, and many other figures and syntactic manipulations. One could also take the question about the structure of her argument and expand that to a full analysis of her argument about the oppressiveness and invasiveness of colonialism and its eradication of those unfortunate enough to
be the subjects of the colonial control.
The essay talks about Kincaid’s opinion of England as a horrible and remarkably undesirable place. The conflict that is apparent in this essay is the idea of prejudice and how it affects can be so forceful and controlling. It is evident in this essay, that as people we have a tendency to hold grudges and make false assumptions based on stereotypes and generalizations. I suppose it could be a human flaw, but it is often times very difficult to overturn preconceived notions and see the good and charm of things when we have stubbornly determined something to be dreadful. Jamaica was upset by the way the English had created the slave trade and how in her eyes, the English see themselves in a superior form than others. This attitude causes Jamaica to generalize the entire country of England as rude, stuck up, racist, and arrogant. This simply goes to show that the word place can be associated with the culture and societal habits of even a small population that reside there.
Kincaid uses ethos strongly to establish her credibility with both a rhetorical audience and general public. Her argument could help us to understand the cross cultural influence occurred during the British colonization in Antigua and how that created a very low self-esteem in the habitants that were segregated in Antigua. This kind of feeling could become aggressive towards English people because of all the frustration, and hostility accompanied by a sense of being powerless to express these thoughts directly.
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