Being a resident of Antigua since birth, Kincaid is able to reflect on better days, one’s in which she believes are more closely aligned with the good life. Her inclusion of personal anecdotes and sentiments on how life used to be, reveals to the reader that she is deeply dissatisfied with the current predicament of Antigua, and corruption that is apparent--only to a native-- on Antigua. While she, as the narrator voice of the novel, realizes that her society cannot assume old ways, she does convey a sense of nostalgia of seemingly better days and, overall, yearns to live in a society that is more closely aligned with her memories from childhood, one that is not corrupted and exploited by tourists and Western ideals. Kincaid expresses, “ I look at this place (Antigua), I look at these people (Antiguans), and I cannot tell whether I was brought up by, and so come from, children, eternal innocents, or artists who have not yet found eminence in a world too stupid to understand, or lunatics who have made their own lunatic asylum, or an exquisite combination of all three.” Through this passage, Kincaid not only expresses her dissatisfaction with the current state of Antigua, but also her neighbor's inability to see past the western-rule that has infested her home.
If viewed through a “tourist” perspective in this book, the “good life” is on where an individual can escape their mundane, boring live, because “being ordinary is already so taxing, and being ordinary takes all you have out of you”(16) which is why their travels to Antigua are not seen as cruel or damaging but as beneficial for their personal well-being. This narrow-minded view of vacationing as the ability to escape responsibility only to indulge in other’s destitution reveals that, yes the “good life” for the “tourists” may be achieved, but at what cost?
