On Seeing England for the First Time
... In “On Seeing England for the First Time,” by Jamaica Kincaid, idealization, repetition, and exaggeration are the effective rhetorical strategies used to convey the emotions of the author’s experience as an eighteen-year-old girl reluctantly swept up in the colonialization by a dominant foreign culture. ... “The very idea of the meal itself, breakfast, and its substantial quality and quantity was an idea from England; we somehow knew that in England they began the day with this meal called breakfast and a proper breakfast was a big breakfast. ... But this breakfast business was made in England like almost everything else that surrounded us…” The large breakfasts Kincaid eats as a child are “made in England,” and yet far from the ideal breakfast in tropical Antigua.