The Disturbances of the Garden by Jamaica Kincaid

 The Disturbances of the Garden 

"But where is the garden and where am I in it?"(P6), this line metaphorically lays out a question that everyone has, what is life and where do I fit into everything? I think the garden can be viewed as an extended metaphor for life itself and the struggles that people face sometimes to figure out how they fit into the world around them. Especially in the Caribbean sometimes being spilt between two cultures or an islands with stark economic and racial contrasts people were forced to ask themselves where exactly they were supposed to be in this world. "On August 3, 1492—the day that Christopher Columbus set sail from Spain, later having a fatal encounter with the indigenous people he met in the “West Indies”—the world of the garden changed."(P8), this line shows where all this change and cultural confusion began. At the end of the day when we ask ourselves who caused the Caribbean to be the way it is today, the answer is all of the European colonists that took over the land. The culture in the Caribbean is colonization anytime anyone asks what the root of the culture is it always goes back to this idea of colonial rule. The relative cultural peace that there once was is gone in the place of a cultural melting pot. I think the diversity of the Caribbean is definitely something that have come to love and embrace and something that makes the place special but it also comes of out of a place of hardship for the people that live there. "Betrayal another feature of any garden(14), this shows how often times with finding your place in the world comes betrayal. Most people have to deal with this in some capacity and for the Caribbean, it is again rooted in their culture. Their culture the way it is today is built on the early betrayal of Christopher Columbus on their sacred land. 


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