The theme of colonialism in literature is about imposing home culture and establishing

control over resources for personal gain over a foreign land rather than just gaining

geographical dominance. During the pre-modern time, the idea of conquests and controlling

of land was naturalized and associated with pride and glory. However, as literature evolved in

the post-modern world colonialism was criticized. Derek Walcott’s Omeros set on the

Caribbean Island of St Lucia includes intertwined narratives regarding colonialism and its

socioeconomic effects on the land and its people. Meanwhile, the Greek Epic The Odyssey by

Homer is concerned with the homecoming voyage of the hero Odysseus during which there is

a tint of colonialism with elements of exploration and raids of foreign lands. While it would

appear that there would be a difference in the idea of foreign domination due to the stark

difference in the time period and the setting, there are many parallels to be drawn in the way

that the disdained practices of colonialism, coincide with the heroic and morally justified

conquests of Odysseus that seem to be naturalized into the plot. These supposedly heroic acts

during exploration were like the reprehensible colonial framework in Omeros, in the way of

ransacking for economic loot, enforcing cultural identities, erasing identity, and subjugating

people however while in The Odyssey they seem to be naturalized into the plot.

A foreign power taking control over a land and its people leads to a change in the vision of

development as decided by the colonialists, which often does not match with that of the

locals. In Walcott’s Omeros, the postcolonial setting after independence in St. Lucia has

Achille, a local fisherman adapting to the new economic reality of commercialization. The

profit-motivated trawler fishers are taking over the industry and the wildlife, and between

Achille’s frustrations, Walcott narrates,

Every dawn made his trade

difficult and empty, sending him farther out

 than he wanted to go, until he felt betrayed

by his calling, by a greed that had never banned

the voracious, insatiable nets. (Walcott 298)

Achille’s trade of fishing is getting difficult day by day as the sea is getting emptier because

of the commercial fishers. The phrase “betrayed by his calling” represents how what he

thought was the correct occupation he was meant to be in, was now causing difficulties and

hence “betraying” him. The greed of the trawlers is referred to since that greed for resources

is what is causing this huge change in the way of life on the island, which Achille does not

appreciate. It shows that the economic prosperity idea of development brought by the colonial

power is forced and not appreciated by the locals who don’t think of it as progress and the

right custom for life. Different cultures and populations live in different environments so

naturally, they will have differing preferences, but colonial powers try to homogenize and

impose this by claiming cultural and economic superiority.

When a country is invaded and colonized, the colonizing power often looks to impose their

own principles and cultural identities on the territory. In Omeros during a certain part of the

text, the Africans have been conquered and they are on a ship from Africa to the New World,

to be utilized for economic and other purposes of the West. With melancholic and poetic

detail, Walcott narrates,

So now they were coals, firewood, dismembered

branches, not men. They had left their remembered

shadows to the firelight. Scratching a board

they made the signs for their fading names on the wood,

and their former shapes returned absently;

 each carried the nameless freight of himself to the other world. (Walcott 151-152)

Here, the colonized population’s plight is observed during the journey to the New World

from their native land Africa through a narrative description given by Walcott. The

metaphors used, including dismembered branches, shows how they have been dehumanized

and objectified for the colonist’s purposes and are now broken parts of a former whole. The

identity that they possessed has been long lost and erased, and they seem desperate to reclaim

it in the way they scratch boards just to let the inscriptions of their names remain. Fading

names on the shipboard symbolize how their identity which is defined through the name and

the cultural significance behind it, is slowly fading into oblivion. The dehumanization done

through the erasure of name and culture depicts how they have now become “freight”,

objectified, and being carried for an instrumental purpose only losing all identity they had.

The descendants of slaves face trauma of two kinds; cultural trauma as their identity has been

erased and carrying the burden put on their ancestors as well as economic distress due to the

aftermath of their lands being plundered. Philoctetes is a St. Lucian who sustained an injury

to his leg during a war. Discussing how Philoctetes feels about the swelling and its relation to

his identity, Walcott describes,

He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles

of his grandfathers. Or else why was there no cure?

That the cross he carried was not only the anchor’s

but that of his race, for a village black and poor (Walcott 24)

While the wound literally refers to the leg wound that makes Philoctetes disabled, it is also a

symbol for the cultural wound that is placed on him after the colonization faced by his

ancestors that make him disabled to get a better lifestyle. Physically he is not able to find any
medicinal cure for the injury, and symbolically the trauma of colonialism runs so deep and is

embedded into the inhabitants of the island and their successors that they cannot escape it.

The remnants of slavery continue to affect the present-day St. Lucians in the way that they

live. The village is described as “black and poor” which highlights the intersectionality of its

marginalization. Firstly, how colonial powers dominated the natural resources and ravaged

the economic reality by impoverishing the island, and secondly how race plays a role. Them

being black showcased a difference, and that overlapping with their poverty led the colonists

to consider their own way of living superior and impose it on them. The cross he carries is

shown as the anchor that injured him but is a burden that will stay with him forever after the

colonial subjugation.

Treating another population as incorrect or inferior in their ways just because of their

difference from the given population is the basis for cultural pride and separation. These are

what are tenets of colonial domination as well. When Odysseus is describing his journey back

from the Trojan War to Alcinous he mentions how during his journey he lands on the island

of the Cyclops and goes in expecting the same hospitality and customs that he is used to

receiving among humans. The Cyclops does not believe in hospitality, and after provocation

eats some of Odysseus’ men. The Cyclops in turn is about to capture Odysseus, but

Odysseus’ cunning allows him to trap and escape the Cyclops. This is the tale Odysseus is

narrating about his past. Furious about the Cyclops’ actions yet proud about his own success

in fighting back, Odysseus exclaims,

‘So Cyclops, no weak coward it was whose crew

you bent to devour there in your vaulted cave-

you with your brute force! Your filthy crimes

came down on your own head, you shameless cannibal, (Hom. Od., 9.531-534)
Here, Odysseus is taking out his anger and pride on the Cyclops. The Cyclops’ do not view

Gods with the same spiritual authority or have law or fertile lands. This difference makes

Odysseus feel they are primitive beings that need to be civilized. The separational judgment

based on characteristics is seen in how Odysseus calls him a shameless cannibal and refers to

his acts as filthy crimes because they did not match his own expectations. Creating a narrative

that a population that looks or acts differently is uncivilized or inferior is comparable to

tactics used for racial discrimination and slavery. Philoctetes’s ancestors underwent a cultural

“wound” after domination, just for being black. Odysseus is prideful about attacking the

Cyclops and hence says it was “no weak coward” who attacked him. While Odysseus and his

peers may consider this an act of heroism, it was in the end an invasion. This pride about

cultural domination over differences and assumed superiority again is like the Colonist’s that

looked to impose their own power by asserting their own identity and customs over the

captured lands. Homogenized thinking is upheld by Odysseus about the island, just like it is

by the colonists about St. Lucia’s customs of progress and culture. Just like the colonists

ideas of progress did not agree with what the St. Lucians wanted as progress in terms of the

methods of fishing and general economics, the Cyclop’s living standards were different and

Odysseus’ consideration of that as barbaric is rooted in discrimination and assumed

superiority. This pride also leads to him later announcing his name before leaving the island

just for the reputation, and this need for fame and glory to the name resembles that of a state

that is expanding its influence across the world through colonies. Announcing the name is

comparable to a nation planting its flag as a symbol of domination. However in The Odyssey

these actions are celebrated and naturalised by the author rather than looking down upon it.

Greek hero expeditions and explorations often were taken to gain the economic resources of a

country, just like it would under colonialism. When Odysseus is narrating the tales of his

travels to Alcinous, he speaks about his journey back which started at Ismarus, the land of the
Cicones. While recounting this incident of ransacking the city, Odysseus swells his chest with

pride and exclaims,

There I sacked the city,

killed the men, but as for the wives and plunder,

that rich haul we dragged away from the place-

we shared it round so no one, not on my account,

would go deprived of his fair share of spills (Hom. Od., 9.45-49)

The land of Cicones gets looted by Odysseus and his men as they kill the inhabitants and take

the riches for their own benefit. Like colonial expansion in Omeros that depended on the

resource richness of the island, where the main purpose of traveling was the greed to take

economic resources. Odysseus invaded it without any given reason, killed the men, and then

also felt entitled in getting the rewards from it as seen in the way he is adamant about

everyone getting their fair share of spills. This entitlement over another entity’s resources and

going to kill for some gold is comparable to the colonists that ravage towns because they

believe they deserve the resources. The assumed “heroism” here appears on shaky grounds as

an attempt to satisfy greed can be compared to a major purpose for colonization, as well as

the trawler fishers that look to dominate resources in St. Lucia. Philoctete talked about how

his village had been rendered poor by the colonisers, and Odysseus without any other reason

ravaging an island and its people for its resources makes his actions sound more colonial than

heroic. Another peculiar fact about this is that it inverts the same hospitality principles and

rules that otherwise the Greeks are so particular about. Odysseus possibly considered this

island as below his status, which is why the rules of hospitality should apply to such islands

including the one of the Cyclops, but not for his own kingdom. Odysseus’s actions being
built on the base of his assumed superiority over differing cultures and populations reinforces

how his actions resemble colonial domination and subjugation.

As a foreign body invades a land, it looks to gain economic benefits from it while also

dehumanising the local population and stripping them from their existing identity. Eumaeus

is Odysseus’s swineherd who was talking to Odysseus in disguise here, about his

whereabouts and identity over casual conversation. Eumaeus narrates the story of how his

father was royalty but his island got invaded by a band of Phaecians. While describing how

he went from royalty to slavery, Eumeaus narrates the story and reaches the part where his

Phoenician nurse assertively pleads to the Phaecians,

such a precious toddler, scampering round outside.

always at my heels. I’ll bring him aboard as well.

Wherever you sell him off, whatever foreign parts,

he’ll fetch you quite a price!’ (Hom. Od., 15.505-508)

Eumaeus’ nurse looks not as him not as having intrinsic worth, but rather an economic tool to

sell of for her own benefit, which is immunity from the Phaecians. The helpless toddler is

taken on the journey, just to earn some economic rewards. The story here is one where

Eumaeus belonged to a royal lineage, but all that was forgotten once the land was invaded,

and then he became a lifelong slave. The parallel with Omeros is about how colonialism

erases the people’s pre-colonial identities and names, and enforces a homogenisation of

accepted values. Eumaeus’s past does not matter, only what matters is that he was bought as a

slave so now he should remain like that. The nameless “freight” that the Africans on the ship

were compared to is applicable here too, where Eumaeus became detached from what his

name signified in royalty, only to be kept for economic purposes. He is now like the broken

piece of the whole, and his old identity was slowly erased like the names on the African ship.
And like colonialism, economic benefit is the pure motive for which all morals and sense of

identities is dissolved, like here the nurse focussing on the price of the child. The same

parallels of Philoctete’s village being raided for resources, and Achille’s fishing being less

productive can be drawn to depict how greed runs the equation behind this exploration. This

incident sheds light on how exploration and invasion was viewed in Greece, and extends to

Odysseus’s case as his travels also served to strip others of their identity by imposing his own

ideals.

Overall, a strong connection is seen where the “heroic” acts of Odysseus mirror the

horrors of colonialism and displacement. The explorations of Odysseus economically raid

populations, impose his ideals on others just because theirs are different to his, strip them of

their individuality and identity, causing the same dehumanisation and cultural subversion that

colonised populations like those in St. Lucia in Omeros felt regarding their name, race and

ideals.