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8 Pi‘s former experience of human isolation drops away from a self that finds and creates membership with the non-human animal world, of which the seas are the largest part, constituting roughly three-fourths of the earth‘s biomes. Just at the point when Pi loses touch with his home land, he grounds himself in the present moment by focusing on the maritime particulars necessary for survival. In literary circles, Snyder is considered primarily an environmental poet and Walcott a postcolonial one. In order to link the two, I make use of Martel‘s environmental and postcolonial castaway, Pi Patel. I compare Snyder‘s Regarding Wave and Turtle Island to Walcott‘s Omeros as complementary attempts at topological mythopoesis for maritime regions. Each poet particularizes a storehouse of myths, symbols, and narratives for the kinds of conversation that can negotiate an ecologically healthy and local sense of place in a globalized world. I argue in chapter one that although its author does not occupy a well-known position in ecofeminist discourse, Regarding Wave performs an ecofeminist critique of linear and immobile archetypes of foundation to articulate a dynamic conception of the human household based on Snyder‘s knowledge of East Asian religion and modern ecology. I continue my castaway analysis of Snyder‘s poetry by arguing in chapter three that the poet applies the lessons of his own trans-Pacific ―spiritual education‖ (Murphy, Literature, Nature, and Other 106) to the politics of bioregional reinhabitation that he sets forth in Turtle Island. Snyder‘s self-reflexive works, Regarding Wave and Turtle Island, form the basis of a ship-wreck narrative best read according to the paradigm of Pi‘s transformation from deeply religious exile to pragmatic and productive ship captain.
9 I approach the complex and thematically robust Omeros from the same environmental castaway lens. Omeros is a complex multi-faceted work that, in my reading, evokes a healing process to reconcile the contradictory social forces structuring St. Lucia and the author‘s public identity. As an intensely self-reflexive work, it attempts to heal or mend the historical ambivalence of its characters and author. I focus on two significant journeys of the character Achille. I analyze the first as a healing quest in my second chapter and the second as the long poem‘s coda in my third chapter. Achille leaves the island of St. Lucia in his pirogue on the first quest to find ―his name and his soul‖ (Walcott, Omeros 154). Walcott‘s searching Caribbean fisherman enacts a symbolic journey to Africa that results in his realization of how far away and atavistic this mother land is. Embracing the tough St. Lucian present as a place of ―unsettlement‖ (140), Achille‘s choice for St. Lucia mirrors Pi‘s decision to give up hope for rescue, making the pragmatic choice to accept the life raft and the concomitant responsibilities of survival. Walcott‘s Achille is a metaphorical castaway and St. Lucia the life raft under which he uncovers a bioregional sense of place and home. Achille‘s second journey results from his frustration with a primitivist tourist economy and the condescension of indigenous workers in this economy. 2 He and Philoctete travel south towards Grenada searching for an uninhabited place to start over, and after an encounter with a whale scares them out of their wits, they realize the neocolonial nature of their desire and return 2 Although effectively neocolonial in its appropriation of island geography and culture, the tourist industry is not an easy target of critique for the West Indian working class. When Walcott protested the construction of the Jalousie Resort and Spa because it effectively privatized St. Lucia‘s volcanic Pitons, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the local working class criticized his opposition to the Hilton Corporation because of the economic opportunity the resort development promised (DeLoughrey et. al. 24).
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: Life of Pi narrates the journey of
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 and 54: 53 Why waste lines on Achille, a sh
Page 55 and 56: 55 generally. Omeros is a multi-fac
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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