Small Island: Chapter 12: Gilbert Summary & Analysis

With his regiment, Gilbert arrives at a makeshift training camp based in a Yorkshire holiday resort. Gilbert and his roommates, Hubert, Fulton, and James, are astounded that British people vacation here, because it’s unbelievably cold and gray. They spend all day on seemingly meaningless drills, like running through freezing fields in their underwear. At night, the men seal the cracks in their cabin with spare clothes to preserve heat, but the bullying Sergeant Thwaites sometimes forces them to open the windows, telling them that “cold air keeps you alert.”

On their first day off, Gilbert, James, Fulton, and Hubert walk into the nearest village, looking for a bar. Gilbert notices that all the locals are looking at them, just as his childhood dog used to examine geckos that passed through his yard. Eventually, some of the braver villagers approach them, asking where they’re from and if they speak English. Fulton even flirts with an attractive woman before a middle-aged man shepherds her away.

Explaining his relationship to England, Gilbert says the “mother country” is like a beloved relation named Mother living far away. Children like Gilbert learn that Mother is refined and mannerly, and that she takes care of little children just like the Lord. One day, Mother is “troubled, she need your help,” so men like Gilbert leave everything they know to hurry to her aid. However, when they arrive, they don’t find the beautiful and cultured relative of their imagination but a battered and dirty old woman who doesn’t even know who they are. Just like the imaginary relative, wartime England seems squalid and debased to the Jamaican soldiers. The people are rough, uneducated and rude; a college educated soldier wonders “how many white people come to speak so bad.”

For his part, Gilbert is chagrined that while he’s known since childhood minute details of British geography and culture, and can talk intelligently about British railways and government, the average British soldier has never heard of Jamaica and thinks it’s in Africa. Moreover, most British people they meet assume the Jamaican soldiers grew up in “jungles and swinging through trees.” Gilbert knows that these people would not spring to Jamaica’s defense as he has rushed to help Britain.