A Change in Perspective

“Every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this.”

Jamaica Kinkaid

     In A Small World by Jamaica Kincaid, the author mentions how every tourist has a home, someplace where they are full of banality and boredom. They travel with the sole purpose of escaping that reality. To accomplish this, a tourist visits almost exclusively touristic attractions from other countries, places where they sell a fairy tale, a false reality. These places do not show the reality of the country, but only it's best representation. The tourist is hated by the natives, who envy him for various reasons, like his capacity to look with rose tinted glasses the very place that brings the natives boredom and depression. They envy him for the fact that he can travel and leave behind his home for a little while, something the natives desperately wish to do but they are too poor. The natives see their home as depressing, and the author claims that every action, good or bad, is to forget their sad reality. I think she is partially right. Living in the same place and looking at the same things makes me start to take for granted my surroundings. We all seek to do new things and travel to new places, even within Puerto Rico. But I can still appreciate my home, and I don’t think every action is an attempt to divert our attention from that boredom. Of course, I am sure the story might be different if I was in a poorer country, and the author might only be thinking of these countries when she wrote the quote in her book. Still, her main point still stands. The difference between a native and a tourist is only just a change in perspective.