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for whom ‘God is a white man’ and ‘His spit on Dauphin people is the
sea’, TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS runs like a fable in which three brothers
fight 'the white planter devil’. Like the Sea in the former here the devil
Walcott’s play TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS was first performed at the
Little Carib Theatre, Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1958. Significantly Walcott wrote
it far from home, on only a few days during his first trip to New York in 1957. His
brother Roderick and the St. Lucia Art Guild produced an early version in St.
Lucia in December, 1957, though the official opening was in Trinidad in 1958.
The play was revived by the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in June, 1970, at the
Town Hall, Port of Spain. For Walcott, the play was a personal success; he saw
it as a turning point in his life. He “generously credits Bertolt Brecht and Oriental
artists for his ideas and inspiration, but in fairness to his own creative abilities
reference must be made to the fact that he had already begun to incorporate the
BROTHERS”.1
Vestiges of the African animal fable appear in the chorus of forest creatures :
Cricket, Firefly, Bird and their spokesman, Frog. Allusions such as the Frog
excusing himself with the words “Aeschylus me’’! after sneezing are not likely to
be missed by the West Indians who from childhood become familiar with the rich
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Andre Tanker dance, emphatic gesture and pause, asides to the audience, and
and, more particularly, of “black man’s confrontation with the white devil”.3
Vexed force, vexed learning play into his hands ; instinct, wisdom, conscience,
sense and good humour defeat him, as far as the devil is ever defeated.
There are three archetypal sons of an old Mother in the play - Gros-Jean,
Mi-Jean and Ti-Jean. The eldest is proud of his physical strength, the second is
a self-educated fool and the third is tender, young, intelligent with a through
Some critics feel that in creating the two characters of Gros-Jean and Mi-Jean
Walcott may have had in mind Dessalines and Christophe, two military “generals
In the play the Devil sends a challenge to a poor mother and her three
sons who live in a forest. Any one human who can make the Devil feel anger,
rage and human weakness will be rewarded by the Devil; any one who fails to do
so will be eaten.
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Anyone human
Can make him feel anger,
Rage, and human weakness,
He will reward them,
(pp. 99-100)
The first two brothers try, each in turn, to get ahead by dealing with the
Devil in the form of a White Planter. Gros-Jean’s brute force and Mi-Jean’s
book-learning are easily outwitted by the cunning Devil. Ti-Jean’s humility and
common sense carry him through. Unlike his two elder brothers, he pays
attention to his mother’s advice to be courteous to the animals of the forest and
to play the game by the Devil’s rules. Unlike Gros-Jean he uses force
intelligently ; unlike Mi-Jean he puts his mind to practical use. Their penalty was
death (though they live in the memory of others) ; Ti-Jean’s reward is life, not
only for himself, but also for the Bolom, the unborn. Ti-Jean asks the Bolom ; Is
life you want, child ? / You don’t see what it bring ?’ and, like Jules in THE SEA
In the play the Devil’s tasks are to keep his goat tied up, to count his
canes and to clean his house. Ti-Jean “fixes" the goat (later eats it), burns the
cane field, and burns the house. The Devil gets vexed, but he says, "I never
keep bargains”. But, Ti-Jean’s course is supported by the Bolom, who is the
ghost of a hideous abortion. So, the Devil pays Ti-Jean money, but, in revenge,
shows Ti-Jean, his mother dying and taunts, “Now you can still sing ?” But,
The Devil, “dying to be human” (as said by the Bolom earlier) is moved to
tears------
(pp. 162-163)
For this experience the Devil grants Ti-Jean a wish and Ti-Jean responds
to Bolom’s pleading for life. So, Ti-Jean goes off with a new brother.
What makes the play so great is the sheer fun of it. This Devil is one of
the great comic devils, and driven by Ti-Jean, he goes on a great comic drunk.
Leaning, leaning,
Leaning on the everlasting arms ...
(P- 152)
Perhaps for this reason alone Theodore Colson envies “those who have
between good and evil, between God and the Devil, eternal absolutes’’.7 When
he himself goads the Devil into revealing his true face and sees it, Ti-Jean says :
‘this is like looking / At the blinding gaze of God’. The Devil,.replacing the mask,
Traditionally Papa Bois is an old man who protects the animals of the forest from
hunters. The refrain’ Bai Diable-la manger un “ti mamaille !” (‘give the Devil a
Christmas and New year; the devils ('Jabs’, 'diables') threaten the crowd, receive
small gifts of money and put on short performances in the street. However, it is
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not easy to distinguish good from evil, and evil may disguise it-self as good.
Ti-Jean recognizing that To know evil early, life will be simpler’, does not take it
for granted that the old man is what he seems to be ; So he examines him
whose birth has been frustrated, so that it constantly seeks entry into life. The
Bolom functions, like the more familiar Afro-Caribbean Eshu, “as an agent of
unpredictability confined in but always shaking the secure form of the play”.8
The Bolom is the most strikingly symbolic figure. The Devil says to him,
“For cruelty’s sake I could wish you were born’’; and Ti-Jean affectionately says,
“Is life you want child ? you don’t see what it bring ?’’ The Bolom, which works
for the Devil, "is the foetus of what would have been a first-born child, stolen just
before birth".9 Theodore Colson is of the opinion that the Bolom is “child of the
represents all fool-heroes, the Mother is all mothers, and the Bolom is all
aborted human potential, in a world of black mothers and white planters. The
When the Bolom delivers the Devil’s proposition (challenge) to the family,
the Mother, and earth figure closely attuned to nature, senses evil before it
discloses itself. In her capacity as nurturer of living beings, she offers love and
compassion even to this aborted creature. The Bolom refuses her offer because
the Devil has promised him eventually the gift of life. Paradoxically, it is Ti-jean
that gets the gift of life sanctioned to the Bolom. Like DREAM ON MONKEY
MOUNTAIN, the play TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTERS also, with the Bolom’s birth,
article, tells of having wanted ‘without really knowing it, to write a softly
measured metre whose breathing was formally articulated, yet held the lyrical
his mind with the conditions of story telling in his St. Lucian childhood and with
influences------ ‘tradition and the sweat of others before us, of whatever culture,
The love of dance, song and mime and music, is the source of the
the love of song and music and dance in the West Indian temperament goes
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back to this root instinct. Walcott thus seeks to revive the power of song, music
and dance in his theatre, in his effort to create a style based on our own
dramatic resources. “This has been developing as a central aspect of his style,
very successfully in plays like TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS and DREAM ON
songs, dances and a narrator and, then, TI-JEAN has been produced. Walcott
himself says:
The black man contends with the white oppressor (the Devil disguised as a white
planter); "the Caribbean black man is seen in three stages of response to white
power, from slave violent rebellions (Gros-Jean), through the attempt to master
the white man’s book-learning (Mi-Jean), to the ultimate triumph of the small
Ti-Jean frees the Bolom of the black or Caribbean future from thraldom to the
white oppressor.
artistic design.
sons who represent the black slaves in their relentless fight for emancipation.
The Slave-master is the Devil who appears as an Old Man with a mask or as
White Planter. Gros-Jean and Mi-Jean represent the “suicide squads of Negro
considered a dramatic re-creation of any or all of those who led slave rebellions
successfully in the West Indies. The West Indies has a long tradition of slave
72
rebellion, with a lot of bloodshed and mass murder of slaves. Those slaves had
were shot dead, they fought with confidence. “The more they fell, the greater
seemed to be the courage of the rest. They advanced singing, for the Negro
hailed by the great poets like Goethe and Shelley as a parable of human revolt
foolhardily pitched himself against the tyrannical and villainous god, Zeus.
strength in fighting the Devil reminds one of the titanic strength upon which
divine oppression ; but his liberation does not lie in his own titanic force.
Similarly, the decline of the Devil in Ti-Jean does not lie in the brute force of
Gros-Jean.
the spirit of perseverance when persecuted. Devil’s victory over Mi-Jean stands
for a political tyrant’s win over a force of resistance that lacks persistent courage
and endurance.
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adopted by Ti-Jean to overcome the Devil resembles those vile tricks employed
A neighboring gentlemen....................
has now three negroes in prison,
all domestics, and one of them grown
grey in his service, for poisoning him
with corrosive sublimate ; his brother
was actually killed by similar means.17
Ti-Jean, perhaps, could not have succeeded against the Devil if he had
not resorted to the vile trick of getting the plantation burnt down. However, he
has in him the meekness of a lamb, the wildness of a tiger, and the cunning of
The saying that pride goes before a fall proves true in the case of
Gros-Jean. His mother warns him not to rely much on his physical strength.
Pentheus, proud with might, neglects this advice and his end is as
words out of sheer pride in his physical strength and ends tragically.
deaf year to the warnings against danger given by the Frog, the Cricket and the
Bird. His academic pride does not help him in his argument with the Planter-
Devil about the divinity of man. The Planter ridicules that the man is no better
The Devil further taunts that a “goat... may be a genius in its own right",
and that Mi-Jean is but a 'descendent of the ape’. Mi-Jean, the intellectual,
Ti-Jean, unlike his two brothers, asks for and receives his mother’s
blessings before leavig home. He takes his Mother’s advice to his heart and
makes friend-ship with the Frog, the Cricket, the Firefly and the Bird. He
compares himself with the Biblical character David and hopes to Win over the
Devil as David Won over Goliath. In the Old Testment Goliath is described as a
huge giant. He was the greatest warrior of the Philistines, the original
inhabitants of Palestine. A war broke out between the Philistines and the
Israelites when Saul was the king of the Israelites. Goliath challenged the
Israelites for a single combat and none dared to take up the challenge. Then
David, a shepherd boy, and the son of Jesse of Bethlehem came forward boldly.
He, with his sling, directed a pebble at the forehead of Goliath and it pierced
Ti-Jean is fully equipped with his Mother’s advice and blessings, the
knowledge acquired from the smaller creatures, and his humility. So, he easily
beats the Devil in his own game. The fight, however, is not over though Ti-Jean
It is clear from the above that the struggle against evil is an unending
affair. The only thing that we can do is just to mitigate the Devil’s destructive
power.
Albert Ashaolu says about the Christian allegory in the play TI-JEAN.
“The victory-dance of Ti-Jean at the end of the play reminds us of the typical
dance performed by the Acrobat in the crude mime show put on by Masquerades
at Christmas time in St. Lucia”.19 Papa Diable, followed by little devils (Ti-
Devil. However, the Acrobat, with the help of two friends, or so, again attacks
the Devil (Papa Diable) and defeats the Devil. Then he performs an acrobatic
dance of victory. The initial fall of the Acrobat in his fight with the Devil
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resembles the death of Christ and his revival stands for Christ’s resurrection and
ascension and victory over Death. The Devil’s song in Ti-Jean, “Bai Diable-la
manger un'ti mamaille, un, deux, trois’ti mamaille"! is the same as that sung by
means folk, people, men. Gros-Jean stands for the gross individual symbolizing
the big power class in Society. Mi-Jean represents the middle-class people with
their learning and intellectuaiism. Ti-Jean, “the little man" is a name associated
with the little man in the moon in West Indian folk tale. Walcott has made the
best use of this folk tale for he makes the Frog say in the Prologue of the play :
(P- 86)
who die too young to have been sinful).20 Ti-Jean would be a metaphor for the
“little” people in society, the low class, noted for their humility and common
sense. Bolom also belongs to this class. Bolom, reborn, becomes the “foetus of
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Caribbean aspirations, who chooses the pain of selfhood rather than continue to
Walcott is very familiar with classical works. There are various classical
allusions in TI-JEAN which prove this fact. Before starting to narrate the tale of
the Mother and her three sons, the Frog sneezes and says “Aeschylus me
Euripides vies for. Dionysus has to judge as to who deserves the 'tragic chair’.
preference for Aeschylus over Euripides. Walcott also considers Aeschylus the
great and wise poet-playwright. A Narrator like Frog needs Aeschylus as its
muse and source of inspiration. That is why the name of Aeschylus is put in the
mouth of the Frog. By invoking Aeschylus the Frog has elevated itself from the
vision. The frog is usually a model of sagacity for the Africans. Here the Frog
is "as much Aeschylus as it is Walcott the artist himself presenting us with the
Though Albert Ashaolu suggests six levels of allegory jn the play------ the
artistic, historical, political, moral, Christian and social----------they are not all of
equal significance. They revolve around a focal centre that is artistically unified
through literary allusion, dance and other stage conventions. The theme centres
Gros-Jean, as put by Frog, is big but very stupid. The white Planter sets
him to counting the leaves in a cane field and collecting fireflies. Gros-Jean gets
discouraged after two days, but it is not the work that defeats him. The Devil
forgets his real name and calls him continuously by other names. This insult to
his prowess exasperates Gors-Jean and makes him lose patience. It results in
his death.
Mi-Jean is only half as stupid as his elder brother. He takes pride in his
music :
assigned tasks. But, he fails to tie up an obstreperous goat. His main defense
until the Planter argues that the goat thinks and has as much soul as man.
......... No, I’m not vexed, you know, but......... “(p.129). But, he loses life in the
animals. By the time he meets the Devil, Ti-Jean has developed the ability to
face advertisty with equanimity and good humour. What the Devil cannot
calculate is Ti-Jean's sense of humour, and his nimble trickery. When ordered
to tether the goat that keeps evading, Ti-Jean castrates it and simplifies the task.
Asked to count and classify the leaves in the fields, Ti-Jean settles for the
expedient of burning the plantation. He roasts the goat of the Devil on the
flames. He gets the Devil’s house also burnt down. Ti-Jean’s roguery causes
the Devil to laugh and rage in turn. Thus, he wins the contest. The Devil
sing while his mother dies. Ti-Jean’s voice falters as he sings, but his pain
moves even the Devil to tears. The Bolom now pleads with Ti-Jean to request
the Devil on his behalf the gift of life. Ti-Jean unselfishly uses the one wish
offered by the Devil to help the Bolom. Inspite of Paradoxical linkage of death
and life, the Bolom chooses mortality with its joys and sorrows, and he claims Ti-
Jean as his brother. But, their victory is only a temporary respite, as the Devil
The action of the play closes with a moral thus fulfilling the tradition of
(P-166)
As a result of his victory, Ti-Jean has become the man in the moon. The
image of a man in the moon with a bundle of sticks on his back is not particularly
TEMPEST’’.24
Several fables exist about the man in the moon, with a lantern, dog and
bush. One old Christian story is that he is a man who is sent there as a
punishment for gathering fire-wood on Sunday, (the man who broke the
Sabbath-Number xv, 32-36). Another version is that the man in the moon is
Cain, the first murderer, (Genesis, III, 18); another with Isaac,sacrificing on Mt.
Moriah, the bush being the bundle of thorns which he carried to make the fire for
his sacrifice (Genesis); yet another version associates him with Endymion of the
classical mythology with whom the moon goddess is in love. Of course, modern
of the features of every ancestor”.26 The language in the opening scene of the
play subtly insists upon this principle. The action begins with animal noises.
Then the Frog sneezes. In Europen folklore the sneez is an omen that a story is
In the play the animals give things their names and the effects is more
Ovidian than Adamic. In naming the moon ‘Ti-Jean’, the play aims to enrich the
give one’s vision the force of myth and thereby make it available to the
audience: “When one began twenty years ago it was in the faith that one was
creating not merely a play, but a theatre, and not merely a theatre, but its
environment’’.27 Walcott not only puts West Indian life on stage in this play, but
also makes claims, projects about that life and its limitations in it, besides
but as an effectual one. The creatures of the place possess and use the story
as their own. In the beginning there is no rain and no moon. Frog tells the tale
of the origin of the moon, and that invocation makes it appear by recapitulating
its creation. The fable itself is a moral guide. So, the moon, whose presence is
both starting point and result of the fable, also stands as perpetual reminder and
guarantor of the lesson. In the West Indies the critical interpretations of the play
have been varied, spinning out moral, historical and even explicitly political
Indian Drama as its message and manner of presentation are uniquely West
poet and West Indian playwright. His early plays like TI-JEAN and DREAM ON
Ce’ saire, Edouard Glissant, Daniel Boukman, and Ina Ce’saire. Other West
Indians like Dennis Scott and Trevor Rhone (Jamaica) and Errol John, Errol Hill
and Earl Lovelace (Trinidad), share many of Walcott’s concerns, but none
defines the term ‘madness’ as "freedom from inhibitions resulting from living
Those mad are able to delineate how the proscriptive forces operate.
Meridian Hill and Ernest Gaine’s Copper confront with those who hold to the
same norm consider overwhelming and matchless odds. The action of these
link between madness and disguise, demonstating that “only in the mask of the
ultimate lack of freedom, in madness and in death, can freedom be assured ....
. (p.4). The mad characters of black writers usually lay themselves bare instead
of donning the mask. They see the pragmatic value of the myth of blackness
and madness as a manner of manipulating those who believe in it” (p.25).30 The
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suffers from a slight mental imbalance as said by his friend Moustique. The very
first words of the Conteur in the Prologue of the play and repeated by the
Mooma, mooma,
Your son in de jail a’ready,
Your son in de jail a'ready,
Take a towel and band your belly.
(p.212)
Makak is put in jail for disturbing the peace. With the above words the fact that
a biologically inferior race. Makak suffers from a troubled identity and he is like
consciousness. Although seeing life from Monkey Mountain may have its
historical and symbolic leprosy of his race. The true power of the mind is the
power to re-establish one’s identity and mental balance. Makak yearns to return
to Africa and come into contact with his submerged autonomous consciousness
characters like Makak exhibit the acute need to work to prevent alienation from
madness himself, the Devil, mad. The playwright’s desire is not so much that
the victims simply make the Devil mad, but that they will discern the formula
which made them rage and turn mad. Robert D. Hamner points out: “The theme
resisting malignant authority in their struggle to survive and improve their lot’’.31
In the play Gros-Jean loses the battle with the Devil as he loses patience
with his tedious assignments to count the leaves in the canefield and to collect
the fireflies. He moves toward rage and madness mainly because the white
Planter repeatedly forgets his true name. As with Makak, there is the sense that
to eclipse the name is to annihilate the potent self, along with one’s poise and
mental balance. Walcott wants to teach a lesson that the memory of one’s
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acknowledge the identify of the exploited. Any one would easily fall into the
Devil’s cunning-trap unless one is careful. Mi-Jean, too, is lured into infuriation
and rage and toward madness as he falls prey to the same vain expectation that
AND COLOURS reveal the insanity of history. The carnival form in the play
pageant is seen as questionable and Mano suggests that the comic form needs
Carnival is the revising of the general order, Carnival here is indicated also by
for unquestioned authority. Of course, it can also push one to madness. Thus,
themselves in the farcical and the comic. History is a quarrelsome, mad force
Ralph Ellison says : “One may have to risk walking on the borderline of
proscribed value system. One’s identity is closely involved with what one
values. In order to escape this one must invariably move into a certain void or a
Taking this existential step is often portentous and terrifying. One considers
whether there is more security in the existent state than there is in the
one’s attempt to manage his or her own metamorphosis. Because all do not
survive the slaying of the dragon, since to slay the dragon often involves to
MOUNTAIN, the Devil in TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS and Afa in THE SEA
characters seem to absorb their creator’s full attention, and ours. The fictive
racist white Planter and the archetype of evil. Walcott’s Devil is a serious
philosophical comment on evil, on the effect evil has on the individual, and, at
metaphysical verse play with music in plain but good English, a relevant black
package, and it is not surprising that the string snaps. But, there is a certain
"brazen ingenuity in the basic conception that is not without appeal.... "35
The writing of the play is’’prosy in verse and prosaic even in prose :
artistic conscience, Walcott throws in those literary echoes, and these, in the
native context, sound painfully ostentatious. Yet, the final flaw is in that contest
between a Devil, who, though perhaps not bright enough, is made interestingly
real; and, a hero, who, although vaguely resourceful, is not really interesting.
One feels that, “like Blake’s Milton, Walcott is , without knowing it, of the Devil’s
party”.37
92
Eldred Jones once commented, “good works of art are notorious for
yielding more than their authors consciously put into them”.38 This comment
made with reference to J.P. Clark’s THE RAFT is quite true of TI-JEAN.
Because, Walcott may not have consciously designed the play the way it is now
being perceived.
Thus TI-JEAN AND HIS BROTHERS with its deceptive simplicity deals
with the study of a man who confronts evil boldly. Papa Bois, the Devil, in the
other words it is a story of mankind’s various encounters with the Devil. This
theme, in a way, finds its place in MALCOCHON, OR THE SIX IN THE RAIN
that carries an epigraph from Sophocles : ‘who is the slayer, who the victim ?
Speak’.
93
NOTES
2. Ibid., p. 51.
10. Derek Walcott, ‘Derek’s "Most West Indian play”, SUNDAY GUARDIAN
MAGAZINE (Trinidad), 21 June, 1970, p. 7.
11. Mervyn Morris, “Derek Walcott”, WEST INDIAN LITERATURE , Bruce King,
London and Basingstoke : Macmillan Education Ltd., 1995, p. 188.
20. Lloyd Coke, “Walcott’s Mad Innocents”, Savacou, (5 June, 1971), p. 122.
21. Ibid.,
25. William Shakespeare, THE TEMPEST, ed. Dr. S.K. Benarji, Agra : Lakshmi
Narain Agarwal Educational Publishers, 1974, (Act II, Scene -ii), p. 192.
26. Walcott, The Muse of History’, in Orde Coombs (ed), IS MASSA DAY
DONE?, New York, 1974.
28. Robert D. Hamner, DEREK WALCOTT, Updated Edition, New york : Twayne
Publishers, 1993, p. 54.
95
29. Erskine Peters, "The Theme of Madness In The Plays of Derek Walcott",
CLA JOURNAL, 32 (2); p. 148-1998 Dec., Atlanta G,A,
30. Sander L. Gilman, “On Blackness Without Blacks : Essays on the Image of
the Black in Germany”, (Boston : G.K. Hall, 1982).
31. Robert D. Hamner, DEREK WALCOTT, Updated Edition, New york : Twayne
Publishers, 1993, p. 51.
33. Ralph Ellison, INVISIBLE MAN, New York: vintage Books, 1972, p. 69.
34. Elaine Savory, “Value Judgements On Art And The Question of Macho
Attitudes : The Case of Derek Walcott”, ed. Michael Parket & Riger Starkey,
London : Macmillan Press Ltd., 1995, p. 253.
35. John Simon, “Debilitated Debbil" in NEW YORK MAGAZINE, © 1972 by NYM
Corp., reprinted by the permission of New york Magazine and John Simon),
August 14, 1972, p. 69.
36. Ibid.,
37. Ibid.,
38. Ed. Jones, “African Literature 1966 - 67", African Forum, 3, 1 (Summer,
1967) p. 5.