RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS - The University of North Carolina at ...

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ecovery owes its existence to the Gulf Stream and trade winds that facilitate the island‘s human and biotic traffic. Paul Jay believes that Walcott ―divides his poetic persona between Achille, the descendent of African slaves, and Dennis Plunkett, the exile from England, in order to explore the African and European roots of his [own] identity‖ (548). Readers encounter the British Major Dennis Plunkett in the first book, where the author explains the Major‘s vague memories of a head injury, which he received during the Eighth Army campaign against the Afrika Korps in Tobruk and Alamein with an important, meta-poetic aside: This wound I have stitched into Plunkett‘s character. He has to be wounded, affliction is one theme Of this work, this fiction, since every ―I‖ is a 54 Fiction finally. Phantom narrator, resume (28). The phantom voice narrating the poem continues the story as if the author never intruded at all. Like Gary Snyder‘s situated and self-conscious revision of place archetypes in Regarding Wave, Walcott needs to let his readers know that he is adding his voice to the mythic and creole sources structuring identity in the Lower Antilles. Plunkett recounts his old chums Tumbly and Scottie, and when he comes back to the fact that he lives on a ―traffic island‖ in the Lesser Antilles, he wonders where ―could this world renew the Mediterranean‘s innocence?‖ (28). His Eurocentric ideals lead to the nascence of his written history for the beautiful Helen. Plunkett‘s character is only one entry into Walcott‘s poetic development of a viable form of cultural hybridity for himself in St. Lucia and archipelago cultures
55 generally. Omeros is a multi-faceted poetic exploration of bioregional identity through the exchange of the dramatis personae of Greaco-Roman heroes, contemporary Antillean people, and the Cyclops, Medusa, and Circe of history. Angered by tourists and their simplifying historical gaze, ―Achille would howl / at their clacking cameras … the scream of a warrior losing his only soul / to the click of a Cyclops‖ (Walcott, Omeros 299). Medusa is a mythic figure of ambiguity, which Walcott uses to symbolize North American past, ―that Medusa of the New World‖ (―Muse‖ 36). Textbook history for Walcott reduces its colonized students to ignorant natives. He retorts that ―if History saw them as pigs, History was Circe / with her schoolteacher‘s wand‖ (Walcott, Omeros 63- 64). Walcott offers a poetic model of how bioregional reinhabitants can live meaningful lives in spite of the region‘s intense hybridity and bitter history. Despite the pain of memory, Omeros portrays the acceptance of ―this archipelago of the Americas‖ (Walcott ―Muse‖ 64). It dramatizes Walcott‘s hope to assimilate ―the features of every ancestor,‖ while retaining a sense of wonder and praise for the earth (―Muse‖ 36-38). The poem represents these diverse ancestors through its dramatis personae. The West-Indian poet grapples with the ―Medusa‖ of historical trauma through the trope of antidote, and offers a provisional solution: Caliban‘s cry equals Prospero‘s spell. Omeros hybridizes the ancient Aegean seafarer with the West Indian self in order to integrate the region‘s divided history. Achille is an exemplary character because he achieves this integrated place-consciousness of St. Lucia through the etak chronotope. He gives up the masculine heroic quest for his father‘s ghost and learns a renewed commitment to his native home. The ocean surrounding him ceases to separate him from a continental center and shifts into an environment of sustaining rhythms.
Page 1 and 2:
RE-INHABITING THE ISLANDS: SENSES O
Page 3 and 4: TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract . . . .
Page 5 and 6: environmental context for American
Page 7 and 8: Life of Pi narrates the journey of
Page 9 and 10: 9 I approach the complex and themat
Page 11 and 12: 11 heroic fisherman Achille both ar
Page 13 and 14: offer readers ways to perceive a li
Page 15 and 16: To gain a sense of Snyder‘s situa
Page 17 and 18: 17 cultural traditions of their par
Page 19 and 20: North American homeland. I analyze
Page 21 and 22: 21 primitive 10 social structures f
Page 23 and 24: 23 castaway gives up the idea of re
Page 25 and 26: other.‖ His chosen place in the h
Page 27 and 28: 27 exclaims in affirmation to this
Page 29 and 30: the overthrow of ―patriarchy and
Page 31 and 32: 31 —wind, shake stiff thorns of c
Page 33 and 34: deities. He invokes the ―Sky Gods
Page 35 and 36: 35 where ―sea-people‖ and ―se
Page 37 and 38: 37 CHAPTER TWO: O-MER-OS, SINGING T
Page 39 and 40: 39 (2) because all landmasses, stri
Page 41 and 42: 41 Puerto Rican writer Antonio Pedr
Page 43 and 44: 43 forward to a promised pig for ne
Page 45 and 46: 45 and a ball and chain, everywhere
Page 47 and 48: ―intertextuality has been seen as
Page 49 and 50: of initiation into the songs and pr
Page 51 and 52: 51 Walcott utilizes the canoe 33 as
Page 53: 53 Why waste lines on Achille, a sh
Page 57 and 58: 57 while the latter applies the ―
Page 59 and 60: 59 Dante‘s Malebolge 35 in Sulphu
Page 61 and 62: 61 who refuse to wear the uniform.
Page 63 and 64: growing environmental movement, whi
Page 65 and 66: 65 Contemporary environmental probl
Page 67 and 68: Environmental Criticism 63). Coloni
Page 69 and 70: 69 psychological‖ (Elder 110) ans
Page 71 and 72: 71 upward social mobility was a pri
Page 73 and 74: this luxury, to see nature as denud
Page 75 and 76: 75 family roots in Texas and Washin
Page 77 and 78: 77 symbolism for a sensibility that
Page 79 and 80: Western mythos that Derek Walcott d
Page 81 and 82: 81 negotiate the challenges of New
Page 83 and 84: 83 WORKS CITED Adams, Carol J., Ed.
Page 85 and 86: 85 2002. Print. Carpenter, Kevin. D
Page 87 and 88: 87 100-08. Print. Intergovernmental
Page 89 and 90: Oelschlaeger, Max. The Idea of Wild
Page 91 and 92: 91 ---. Regarding Wave. New York: N
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