Austin Clarke’s “Leaving This Island Place” follows an honored tradition in West Indian fiction initiated by V. S. Naipaul in 1959 with the final chapter of Miguel Street, in which the central character explains his reasons for leaving the Caribbean. Clarke elaborates the theme of the search for greater opportunity abroad by introducing the conflict between the traditional family unit and illegitimacy, and the insincerity of the religious middle class with its pretensions, hypocrisy, and duplicity. As a result, the story is more than one young islander’s search for personal satisfaction by attending a university abroad rather than a local university; it is a search for personal identity, an investigation of self and conscience, and ultimately a search for the meaning of love and responsibility.

The mother never tells the eighteen-year-old protagonist who his father really is; the godmother assumes that her intuition is correct but seems to be motivated by animosity rather than love; Barrabas clearly takes pleasure in punishing a simple man and a community hero for simple pleasures such as drinking heavily—a common indulgence in the West Indies; and Cynthia, although she protests her great love, is intent on deceiving her father and did not love the narrator enough to admire his rise from poverty, illegitimacy, and social marginality. The clergy love not the poor and despised, but the affluent and socially acceptable. Only Miss Brewster, the old and knowing nurse, seems to comprehend the real nature of love: She sees it in the old man and exhorts it in the young one. For her, love is demonstrated by a visit, by the gift of a piece of fruit, not by an expensive briefcase, sexual pleasure on a beach, or a ride in a fashionable car. The death of the old man, whose name the narrator has never borne, represents the death of love for and from people and the death of attachment to Barbados. Seawell Airport is the end and the beginning.

Leaving A central theme of this story is "leaving.’’ The story follows the day prior to the departure of the narrator from his native Barbados to go to school in Canada. He mentions repeatedly that he is ‘‘leaving’’ the island of Barbados. The story focuses on the various implications for the narrator of ‘‘leaving’’ his home. Out of guilt, he goes to visit his dying father the day before he leaves. He is also leaving his girlfriend, Cynthia. Although she insists that he write every day, and that they should have run off to get married, and that she will be at the airport to see him off, her promises are hollow. She doesn't even show up at the airport to say goodbye to him. So leaving the island means not only abandoning his poor, dying father, but also forfeiting his relationship with Cynthia.

"Leaving" also functions symbolically in the story. "Leaving" symbolizes death. His father even describes his own imminent death by stating that his is "leaving." Furthermore, "leaving" the island, for the narrator, means leaving his family and his cultural roots. Throughout the story, the narrator expresses ambivalence about the fact that he is "leaving." At one level, the reminder that he is "leaving" is a justification for abandoning his father. "Leaving" also represents a fantasy of ‘‘escape" from both his troubled family history and his socioeconomic background. He tells himself that he is ‘‘leaving. . .for Canada. . .for hope. . .for glory.’’ But he also feels the anxiety of leaving the home that he knows for the unknown, as represented by the image of the vast and endless...