Selection From Omeros

• The poem is written by Derek Walcott

• Saint Lucian poet/Playwrighter
• Nobel Prize in 1992
Introduction
 Published in 1990
 Seven Books(64 Chapters)
 Written in Hexameter (inaccurate)
Selections from Omeros
 Omeros (Greek name for Homer)
 Walcott reteels the story of Homer’s Odyssey
 CHARACTERS
 Achille, Hector, Helen, Philoctete, Major Plunkett,
Seven Seas, Ma Kilman, Warwick(Ghost of Derek’s
Father), Maud, Afolable
BRIEF SUMMARY/OVERVIEW
Post Colonial Aspects
 IMPERIALISM
 Imperialism enforces cultural authority over inferior
people through Religion, art, racism, gender and language
 Societies have to create a social class(Marxs Theory)

 “This is how one sunrise, we cut down them canoes”

Identity

 One of the results of Colonialism is a loss of identity for Natives

 “… Men take their colours/as doo trees…. The olive, the cedar, a desert place widens in
the heart(208)
 “Helen needed a history/that was the pity that Plunkett felt towards her/Not his,…. But
Helen’s war”(30)
 Achille battles between his African and Caribbean identities“Today he was African his own
epitaph/his own resurrection”
 “Someplace, /some cove he could settle like Another Area/founding not Rome but
home”(301)
Rootlessness

 Related to identity
 Caused by the lack of identity
 “he hacked every root at the heel! You All see what it’s like without
roots in this world?”
Colonisation

 Theme of Colonisation and Slavery is predominant in Omeros

 ….. Chained ankles/of his grandfathers.
Migration

 Migration is rooted deep in Wawhit’s Omeros

 Major Plunkett represents class of white people
 Hector represents migration of West Indians to urban areas
 Walcott (narrator) in search for identity
Conclusion

 Hybrid form
 Rewriting of Caribbean experience
 Homerian Style
 Among the themes that is touched are colonialism, Slavery, racism