Woundedness in Walcott's Omeros

A pretty simple, dichotomized “story” is often told in light of inequitable social structures. There are the powerful oppressors, the wounders, and the weak oppressed, the wounded. While conceding small bits of truth from broad categorization, Derek Walcott tells a more complex, nuanced tale in his contemporary epic poem, Omeros, while trying, as Dr. David Hoegberg describes in his article “Unstable Identities,” to dwell in the “tension between the drive to universalize guilt, and the drive to make specific moral accusations.” Put more simply, everyone—and perhaps everything—is in pain, broken to some extent. This woundedness comes from different sources: physical injuries, psychological distress, economic exploitation, racial prejudice, and others. But a general woundedness is universal in Walcott’s poem.

One of the beautiful characteristics of Walcott’s poetry is the way he personifies so much of the natural world. For him, “the dripping tendrils / of an octopus wrung its hand in laughter” and “Night was fanning its coalpot / from one catching star.” But one of Walcott’s purposes in personifying nature is to show that it—and not just humans—is wounded. Hoegberg, in “The Anarchist’s Mirror: Walcott’s Omeros and the Epic Tradition,” claims that Walcott writes with “ecological consciousness.” From the opening chapter of the book, those who cut down trees are called “murderers.” A gash in a tree is described as a “wound.” Later, Walcott describes Achilles’ “hands gloved in blood” after a big fishing catch on the water, insinuating that his trade was violent, than wounding fish for profit was less than honorable.

But Walcott’s pointing out nature’s woundedness does not to devalue human life and experience. Despite his own Caribbean background and the sympathies that have resulted from his upbringing, his fair thoughtfulness shines through in his characters, all of which seems to demonstrate some sort of woundedness. If a reader were to assume Walcott “took sides,” he or she would peg him on the opposite side of the character named Plunkett, a Caucasian master who employs workers with African descent on his pig farm for minimal payment. But Walcott does not hold back Plunkett’s own woundedness, which explains some of his behavior as a character. Plunkett is a British World War II veteran who retired with his wife to St. Lucia. “They’d been out here / since the war and his wound,” Walcott writes. Like other Western transplants, “their poverty (was) my paradise,” as is said later in the book. Plunkett’s woundedness is not solely physical, however. “What was it all for?” the narrator asks about the war, insinuating that Plunkett had been exploited before he ever chose to exploit. “A bagpipe’s screech and a rag,” is the answer. Plunkett’s marriage also declines as he is far way from his native land in Europe.

Lest Walcott be deemed a traitor or solely a Western sympathizer for the complexities evident in his Western characters, Hoegberg asks, “How, then, can a poet develop an international consciousness that includes European culture without betraying ‘his people’ and their struggle?” So on the other end of the traditional dichotomy is the native, Philoctete, a native whose name was an ironic allusion to a minor character in Homer’s The Iliad. Philoctete was also—predictably—wounded. And like Plunkett, his woundedness was both physical and psychological. Walcott writes, poignantly: “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 / as the pigs that rooted in its burning garbage.” Hoegberg adds that characters like Philoctete “do not have the choice of direct rebellion,” which was not a very hopeful reality in which to live. He and other natives “endured the decimation / of their tribe without uttering a syllable.”

Walcott’s Omeros is not shy about illuminating moral injustices, but still manages to avoid simplistic finger-pointing categories of sole oppressors and complete victims. There are other examples throughout the epic poem, but Plunkett and Philoctete are two of the more obvious extremes. Hoegberg points out that Walcott, like Virgil “prefer(s) to look forward with hope.” He adds that “Violent reconquest is not the best response to European crimes.” What is the best response, though? That question would require its own study, but Walcott offers little clues throughout his work of his hope for non-violence and equity, localized rule, and surviving off of, rather than the exploitation of, the land.

***This piece has been adapted from an academic essay I wrote. Citations have been removed for readability. If you are interested in where I found something, send me an e-mail and I'll gladly tell you!