Derek Walcott

A detailed Summary of Derek Walcott

Derek Walcott: The Caribbean Poet.

Derek Alton Walcott was born in St. Lucia, a small island in the West Indies, in 1930. His parents were middle-class Protestants in a society of predominantly poor Catholics. He studied literature at St. Mary's College in St. Lucia and at the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. A man of two distinct and opposite bloodlines; English and African, he often writes of the struggle within. At the age of eighteen, he financed the publication of his first collection of poetry titled Twenty-Five Poems. He writes plays as well as poetry and has been awarded an Obie for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain. In 1992, after years of waiting, Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize for literature, and has been cited as the first great poet of West Indian culture (Anderson 73).

His mother, being actively involved in the local theater during his early years, strongly influenced his artistic development. Walcott's father, a painter with some degree of talent, also helped influence his work. The self-portrait of his father gave him motivation and he felt a sense of continuity while practicing his art. This combined parental support, at a very early age, gave him the confidence to start painting. O

His division leads to, and goes hand in hand with, his personal isolation. Walcott seems to say, that he is alone and can only be alone. The black community does not totally accept him, neither does the white. He is lost and is desperately trying to find a place to call home. Walcott shows the solitude that he feels and draws his readers into sharing it with him. He is in a middle state: historic loss at one extreme, and responsibility to his feelings; their validity and measure at the other. His words, "Again brutish necessity wipes its hands / Upon the napkin of a dirty cause," tell how he despises those that subjugated his people and himself (Baugh 51). Because of the fact that his ancestors left Africa to settle in St. Lucia, they have suffered a great cultural loss and must now cultivate and embrace a new culture (West Indian) for themselves.

Religious imagery is yet another device of Walcott. He says in his poem, that the violence of beast on beast is natural and understandable. Animals live by instinct and do not have any morality. To avenge his dead, man kills more and more of his fellowman. This action perpetuates the vicious cycle. What is even more troublesome is that he inflicts pain and suffering on his enemies and still believes that this is divine behavior (Asein 60). One other aspect of Walcott's poem, although maybe not a device, is the lack of division among the races. He suggests that respect for all life is essential for man to achieve true divinity.

Metaphor is another device that Walcott seems to appreciate. He uses this device to create symbols that his readers can vividly picture in their minds. In Walcott's poetry there is a tension between the ideas of simplicity, lucidity, directness and those of complexity, opacity, and obliquity. These two sets of ideas are inseparable, since the truth that Walcott seeks is at once simple and complex. The use of metaphor allows him the powerful means of expressing this tension. Walcott also shows the importance of place and background by packed, complex and profusely metaphorical verse. It is almost as if he is painting on the canvas of his readers' imagination (Baugh 54). They walk away with something new each time they read the poem. His readers can see the use of metaphor from the very first line i

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Approximate Word count = 1554
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English