Jamaica Kincaid's A Small Place

Knowing who the audience is in a passage or text is highly helpful to understand the main idea or argument the author is presenting. This can indeed change the viewpoint of the reader drastically because the tone and other elements would change in the passage or text. At the start of Kincaid’s "A Small Place," the apparent audience were tourists, but by the end of the passage, the audience changed to the English colonist, therefore, throughout the passage, the blame for why Antigua has changed dramatically is because of the English colonist, not the 20th century tourist; while Byerman’s article “Anger in A Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid’s Cultural Critique of Antigua” states the blame for the change is due to both the tourists and English colonists.
The culture consisted of former slaves with black heritage and indigenous Indians where both people had set traditions with vivid cultures. Kincaid additionally talks about places where the English have control over the Antiguans and where the English culture is infused: Barclays Bank, The Mill Reef Club, the schools, etc. In the "Anger in A Small Place: Jamaica Kincaid's Cultural Critique of Antigua" article, on page two, it says, "the extended attack on… tourism [by Kincaid] as a kind of neocolonialism is straightforward in its polemics" (Byerman). To understand the stance Byerman made, one definition is needed to be known: neocolonialism. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, neocolonialism is "the use of economic, political, culture, or other pressures to control or influence another country; esp. the retention of such influence over a developing country by a formal colonial power". Tourists, according to Kincaid, are not close to being neocolonialists because they are not using economic, political, cultural ideas or any other pressures to control/influence Antiguans, they are only visiting the country to explore the current culture and country. Instead of the tourists, the English are the ones who are controlling the Antiguans with their culture, politics, and economics. The culture the English brought was their language, schools, etc. The politics changed in Antigua because the Antiguans had start respecting the Queen of England, and lastly, the economics the English used were adapted in Antigua due to the banks, trade of natural goods, etc. The tourists did not change the culture because if they did, then Kincaid would not have written, "the Antigua that I knew, the Antigua which I grew up, is not the Antigua you, a tourist, would see now" (23). The quote shows that only the tourist consumes the culture