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Here Comes the Sun: Deconstructed Student Essays

Alphonso's villa

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Montego Bay Montego Bay is an area in Jamaica with a lot of hotels and resorts. In the novel, it has richer areas (such as Lagoons) and the pushed aside areas where natives live (such as (formerly) River Bank and Little Bay).

Montego Bay is a central geography in Here Comes the Sun. Alphonso, the white Jamaican owner of Palm Star Resort (as well as plantations and fields all over the island), has a villa in Lagoons. Alphonso's villa is an important location in the novel because it acts as a colonial landmark on the island. His villa is on high ground and overlooks the rest of Montego Bay, showing a certain spatial hierarchy between Alphonso and the Jamaicans who live on the outskirts of the area (like Margot and her family in River Bank). The villa is also decorated with the work of Jamaican artists that Alphonso "collects" (which is in contrast with the hotel that has no images of Jamaica or the island culture in it). Finally, the villa acts as the "headquarters" of Margot's sex work business where she does the recruiting and training of the young girls.

River Bank is another important landmark in the novel as it is where Margot, Thandi, Delores, Verdene, Charles, and Miss Ruby live.
The geography of River Bank is reminiscent of the geography of Willow Springs that Gloria Naylor gives in her novel Mama Day. Willow Springs is connected to the continental US by a single bridge, similarly to how River Bank is connected to the main part of Montego Bay by one road. Dennis-Benn includes community and people-based landmarks as well as nature in the description of River Bank (like the goat and river as well as Verdene's Pink House and the shack) which is similar to Naylor's "mapping" of Willow Springs in a communal way. Where these two places differ is the residents' relationship to the space. Willow Springs has a long history and, while the younger generations are shifting the traditions, that history is important and known by everyone. The residents own their land and thus can resist the development of the area. Meanwhile, we do not learn about the history of River Bank or its inhabitants. The residents (with the exception of a few landowners like Verdene) are renting or squatting on the land they are on and thus cannot stop the developers from pushing them out.

Another connection between River Bank and Willow Springs, as well as the novel I, Tituba, is the importance nature place in people's experience of space. In Here Comes the Sun, the weather plays an important role in the novel as the drought and heat affect all the characters and their actions (for example, Thandi having to stay out of the sun so her bleached skin won't burn). In Mama Day, lightning is associated with Sapphira Wade and natural phenomena (such as the earthquake and lightning storm) seem to be connected to the people of the island. Finally, in I, Tituba, Tituba feels a strong connection to the material land of her island, Barbados, and the island seems life-giving. When she is forced to be away from her homeland, she feels disconnected from her culture and origin unless she is connected to nature (for example, she feels more like herself when she has a bowl of water nearby).