Section 4 Summary

Antigua is so beautiful that it almost seems unreal. The sea, the sky, everything adds to the surrealism of the island. Not only is the beauty of Antigua unreal, though; unfortunately, so is the pain. The rain falls with an unreal force that tears up the earth; the "beautiful: poorness of the villages are unreal. The beauty is locked in a prison with everything and everybody locked inside. Yet, Antiguans are ordinary people. They are real people submerged in the unreality of Antigua. The narrator considers what this must do to the people of Antigua. The beauty of Antigua is the same now as it was when the Antiguans were slaves. There has been no historical moment to separate then from now. It was a surreal beauty then, and it now in exactly the same way.

Antigua was discovered in 1493, by Christopher Columbus...