Examining The Culture Of Caribbean Literature English Literature Essay
Caribbean literature is mostly characterized by the plurality and the apposition of both colonial and common people civilizations. “ The Caribbeans cultural plurality has made it one of the dianoetic Centres for the African, the African-american, the European and the Pacific universe ( Parker & A ; Starkey 17 ) .The multi-racial, multiethnic construction of the Caribbean islands overlaps Walcotts canon. Its cultural diverseness is portion of Walcotts endeavour to show scrupulous Caribbean civilization which is based on illustration of the cultural atomization of its people. Opposing the Afrocentric or Eurocentric reading of the Caribbean Walcott asserts “ the cultural cross-pollination ” of the Caribbean part ( Thieme 1 ) . The Markss of Europe, however “ have been impressed upon the terrain of the Caribbean, doubling debatable significances of selfhood, individuality ” ( Parker & A ; Starkey 18 ) . Inhabitants of the modern Caribbean provinces were virtually “ Unknown ” before the “ European invasion ” which “ suddenly interrupted the original form of their historical development… badly altered their physical environment… diversified their diet, complicated their epidemiological systems, produced new biological strains, and linked them inextricably to the wider universe beyond the Atlantic Ocean ” ( Knight & A ; Palmer 1 ) .Walcott dressed ores on the metabolism of the part dwellers. Though the Caribbean can now be identified as the “ venue of the worst facets of the imperial history-enslavement of what were defined as the ‘other ‘ … and extinction of autochthonal people- in the yesteryear it has been the beginning of much western fiction about the enticement and captivation of unsafe pleasances and islands of hoarded wealth ” . ( Parker & A ; Starkey 18 ) .The term “ West Indies ” is itself a European constructed one mentioning to the Eurocentric construct of “ the other ” that may hold different individuality.
The eventuality of individuality or individuality Reconstruction is one of the deep salient issues handled by Walcott as “ the quest for Caribbean aesthetic is enacted on the degree of signifier every bit good as subject ” ( Thieme 74 ) . As Edward Braithwaite provinces, “ The most important characteristic of the West Indies life and imaginativeness since Emancipation has been its sense of rootlessness, of non belonging to the landscape ” ( 29 ) . Whatever takes topographic point among the set of characters and the inter-racial relationships represent microcosm of the cultural alterations in the Caribbean part around the clip of independency. Walcott ‘s method is to do usage of “ a sound psychological footing for every action and emotion ” ( Barnes 52 ) .Dream On Monkey Mountain ( 1970 ) is basically a psychodrama in which he normally externalizes the introverted into action.
The paper aims at the geographic expedition of the Caribbean civilization as it is presented in the quandary of the indigens who have been in hunt for individuality in the post-colonial epoch. Questions of race and ethnicity are indispensable and necessitate farther amplification. The paper, moreover, purposes at exposing the features of Derek Walcott ‘s Caribbean plays with mention to the postcolonial literature to which the drama in inquiry belongs. Exposing the construction of the drama will assist the reader to hold on Walcott ‘s method of exemplifying sedate issues relative to the human individuality.
As the Caribbean communities are made up of big divergent cultural groups that are reflected in literature, it is necessary to specify the term ethnicity. Ethnicity, purely talking, is distinguished from racism though the old use of the term tends to place ethnicity with racism. Both footings refer to the categorization of groups of people harmonizing to certain features. Whereas ethnicity implies such categorization on the footing of cultural properties, racism involves the division in footings of physical characteristics. Cultural properties of the cultural separation include linguistic communication, tradition, faith, race and beginning or combination of these factors. The physical characteristics of racism include traits of the facial type, the tegument, the coloring material, cranial profile, and size or the biological traits in general.
Ethnicity is created whenever there are brushs or clangs between the industrialized provinces and low-level groups including the immigrants or the aliens. That is to state, it is generated when there is a sub-culture which is different from the original tyrannizing one. It is comparative to the cultural plurality in the United States and Canada every bit good as the Caribbean and South Asia. Whenever there is either business or in-migration many cultural groups are found, and discernable ethnicity prevails. The members of an cultural group normally identify with each other on one or more of the aforesaid properties. The implied division is consciously assumed by the members of an cultural group.
Possibly ethnicity and racism are cardinal classs in the West Indies heritage which includes bondage, colonisers and island indigens. The island of Trinidad as representative of West Indies includes many racial and cultural groups. Trinidad ‘s official linguistic communication is English though other linguistic communications are spoken every bit good. There are besides many faiths practised at the island including Catholicism, Protestantism, Hinduism, and Islam. This contributes to the diverse cultural nature of the island. The multiethnic complexnesss, the societal and cultural diverseness of the Caribbeans are derived chiefly from the commixture of the different cultural groups in the part every bit good as the cultural association of diverse cultural cabals within the Caribbean community. As Scating demonstrates: “ Whatever may be identified as cultural differences, between aˆ¦Indians and Africans in the Caribbean, their ain common experience is the civilization of labor ” ( Scating 3 ) .
Walcott emphasizes the cross cultural nature of the Caribbean part particularly in the station colonial epoch. For him civilization creates steady “ passage ” and “ reinvention ” conditions ( Thieme 4 ) . As Thieme asserts: “ poetics of migration ” rule his work in which the act of migration is cardinal since it has so many intensions. The really act is symbolic of transmittal between civilizations and the destruction of the hindering boundaries. The scheme he follows is to “ utilize old names afresh ” in a manner relevant to the “ intercrossed ” West Indies ( Olaniyan 3 ) .
Walcott objects to any racial, cultural or cultural purism since the Caribbean is characterized by hybridity and crossbreeding every bit good as creolization. Hybridity is a cardinal construct of the station colonial literature to which Walcott ‘s drama belongs. Walcott endeavours to develop a cross-cultural aesthetic discourse in a manner that criticises the cultural imperialism. Hybridity is basically a term which is used to make discourse of racial commixture. It merely means mixture and its consequence on individuality is obvious in Dream on Monkey Mountain. As Deloughrey, Gosson & A ; Handley suggest:
The construct of hybridity was first utilised in European scientific discipline of the natural ( nonhuman ) universe. With the seeable presence of racial mixture in the nineteenth-century West Indies, Europeans erected a scientific discipline that argued for the degeneration and ultimate sterility of the progeny of mixed-race sexual brotherhoods ( Deloughrey, Gosson & A ; Handley 16 ) .
Historically talking, the European statement of the domination of their undiluted pure civilization was a agency that justified colonialism and slave trade. Consequently, racial intermingling as seen in hybridity would be a menace to such discourse. As Edmond provinces:
The European compulsion with Caribbean hybridity and devolution can besides be understood as a supplanting of its frights of its ain debasement and diminution as a consequence of hybridisation, a procedure observed in other imperiums as Europe extended its colonial range. ( 42-43 )
Opposing the colonial myths, Caribbean authors have weakened this discourse through emphasizing the human side of the hybridity procedure which includes intermingling of races and cultural production. They celebrate the autochthonal citizen as they draw attending to “ issues of personal and national individuality, and their deductions of political patriotism and freedom from colonial regulation ” ( Birbalsingh xii ) .
Among the many signifiers which hybridity assumes are the political, and the cultural 1s. Hybridity in literature is associated with the postcolonial theory that focuses on the influence of disputing essentialist thought and pattern -namely racism- and it has been associated with individuality and multiculturalism particularly by the Caribbean authors. Walcott is for Caribbean theater and the national theater for Trinidad in peculiar. He calls for “ an eclectic intercrossed dramatic pattern and manners of production appropriate to the Caribbean state of affairs ” ( qtd. in Theime 14 ) .
Cultural hybridity is comparative to the construct of national individuality or the autochthonal citizen which the postcolonial theory celebrates. The theory in inquiry strives to drop Western thought and talk about in favor of the creative activity of a new self-awareness or individuality.
Identity can non be established or reconstructed without mentioning to history. Walcott ‘s thought of history is original and demands illustration. He differentiates between two constructs of history: “ as clip ” and “ as myth ” . History for Walcott is preferred as myth. History as clip Judgess in absolute footings as it is apparent in its accretion of inside informations whereas history as myth is “ fiction, capable to a spasmodic Muse, memory ” ( Olaniyan 97 ) .The former is sterile whereas the latter focal points on imaginativeness. Possibly the undermentioned account by Walcott illuminates his reliable thought of history:
In the New universe servitude to the Muse of history has produced a literature of recrimination and desperation, a literature of retaliation written by the posterities of slaves or a literature of compunction written by the posterities of Masterss. Because this literature serves historical truth, it yellows into polemic or evaporates into poignancy. The genuinely tough aesthetic of the New World neither explains nor forgives history. It refuses to acknowledge it as a originative or blameworthy force. This shame and awe of history possess poets of the Third World who think of linguistic communication as captivity, and who in fury for individuality regard merely incoherency or nostalgia ( qtd. in Olaniyan 98 ) .
In other words, Walcott has written against history. For him, it is full of claims that West Indies have no history. “ History is built around accomplishment and creative activity ; and nil was created in West Indies ” ( Naipaul 29 ) . The other claim stipulates that if the West Indies people have history it has no outstanding event or footing to bring forth an accomplishment or it contributes mostly to the experience of bondage, racism, and great invasions. The New World should be considered without history to hold a new start.
Walcott, in brief, goes beyond the thought of history to the impression of exceeding it as “ Those who claim that there is no sense of history in the West Indies, that his people are without the sense of the yesteryear which fertilizes art as tough weeds fertilize a ruin, suffer from a yearning for that degeneracy ” ( Walcott Dilemma 3 ) . Walcott ‘s theory implies that the true New World authors should reject the thought of history as clip for its original construct as myth. For them history is fiction which is comparative to chew over and memory. “ Their doctrine, based on disdain for historic clip, is radical, for what they repeat to the New World is its simultaneousness with the old ” ( qtd. in Baugh 10 ) . For Walcott what matters is the loss of history or what he calls “ the memory loss of races ” ( Baugh 10 ) and imaginativeness is a basic demand for the West Indies. Traveling beyond history or covering with history as irrelevant is basically his nonsubjective since work forces have tended to mistreat the thought of history. For him, history is “ an ideological concept that has served the intents of a colonial discourse ” ( Baugh 12 ) .
Recently Walcott has leaned towards the usage of American mythologies. He portrays the New World as a 2nd Eden which “ owes much to some of the earliest European derived mythography of the Americas ” ( Thieme 15 ) .His assorted racial background and expounding to both colonial and common people civilizations are assets from which his originative Hagiographas spring and develop.
Herein some of the features of his work in general and his drama in peculiar. As Thieme asserts: “ Walcott ‘s accent on Adamic naming as a scheme for repossessing one ‘s universe from the coloniser, his career-long concern with gnawing Manichean double stars and his development of his poetics of migration all strikingly anticipate subsequent developments of post-colonial theory ” ( 198-9 ) .He possibly represents “ the cultural side of decolonisation and the new patriotism which in bend leads to post-colonialism ” ( King 4 ) . Walcott dramas are more congenial and suiting as stated by Baugh ( 4 ) . Most of his dramas revolve around a story-that is why he regards himself a fiction- in which the hero is the “ poet-persona, ‘a character ‘ who is bit by bit being discovered and created through assorted metabolisms, contradictions and continuities ” ( Baugh 5-6 ) . His plays denote “ the sense of difference, the unhappiness, the fury and the yearning ” that are ” a plangent chord in Walcott ‘s authorship ” ( Baugh 19 ) .His noteworthy Caribbean theatrical principal reveals an effort on the portion of the writer to happen cultural correspondence between Caribbean and non-Caribbean characteristics. That is to state “ Caribbean characteristically includes non-Caribbean ” ( Baugh 27 ) .
Walcott ‘s typical position about the West Indies theatrical manner is uncovering of the “ graphic animalism inherent in the West Indian cultural Heritage ” ( Breiner 70-1 ) which is significant in the commixture of both address and action or what he expresses in the undermentioned statement. “ The strength of the West Indies mind is a merger of formalism with exuberance, a delectation in both the preciseness and the power of linguistic communication ” ( Brenier 71 ) .
In hunt for individuality, Walcott dives profoundly in the past and peculiarly the yesteryear of the colonial stage to “ a classical and pre-classical, intercrossed point of beginning and authorization ” ( Parker & A ; Starkey 19 ) .In Dream On Monkey Mountain Walcott handles a prehistoric stage and topographic point where adult male was ape, where the voice must fawn in hunt of itself, until gesture and sound fuse and the blazing of their flesh astonishes them ” ( Walcott Dream 5 ) .Walcott ‘s return to the beginnings of linguistic communication and being is partially designed to uncover the function assumed by the West Indian as the New World Adam.
The geographic expedition of ego kingdoms to acknowledge desires is basically cardinal to his drama Dream on Monkey Mountain. Accepting the ego is of paramount significance since it is more effectual than the absurdness of seeking racial retaliation. The find and credence should be turned into art. Walcott ‘s positions of “ the ego ” -or identity- faith, and “ the place ” have farther intensions. Home or fatherland should be established without following the forms of belonging set by the dictatorial swayers. It involves citing the old liquors within the West Indies communities and landscape. Walcott holds the position that the sense of ego which belongs to a certain place is based on the alteration in the consciousness of the West Indian every bit good as the reinterpretation of the history of humanity which witnessed duality between faith and Darwinism refering adult male ‘s development. Hence, new combinations and reapplications of the Caribbean myth, fable, and criterions create metempsychosis. West Indians suffer from certain quandaries relative to the Reconstruction of the individuality within the heterogenous scene. One of these incommodiousnesss is “ the demand to happen some social/cultural/artistic theoretical account which would arouse the engagement of the heterogenous facets of the part ” ( Samad 228 ) .Therefore, through that engagement, a sense of the individuality is secured particularly in driving out the spirit of disaffection and homelessness.
Relative to the individuality quest in Walcott is the issue of creolization which forms a cardinal political orientation in Walcott ‘s repertory of dramas and literature in general. It is defined by Glissant – one of the outstanding Caribbean authors and theorists- as the province of “ transmutation ” “ through which people create a corporate sense of individuality from multiple cultural beginnings ” ( qtd. in Pollard 5 ) . Creolization signifies the procedure of making something in the settlements that is neither “ autochthonal to the part nor indistinguishable with its opposite number in the civilization of beginning ” ( Pollard 5 ) .As Pollard provinces: Walcott creates “ New World Poetics ” ( 5 ) that are non autochthonal because they are driven from several Diaspora civilizations including European modernism. However, such poetics are non analogous with the antecedently mentioned tendency because Walcott has naturalized its criterions to uncover his New World Caribbean experience.
As Dash suggests: “ This creolization does non… easy homogenise civilizations to extinguish cultural, cultural, national or ideological struggle, but it besides does non disregard the cultural exchanges that occur despite these struggles ” ( 47 ) . Creolization for Walcott, implies incongruousness and difference every bit good as mutuality and opposition. Creolization is involuntarily made by the violent being of colonization in the Caribbean part and similar districts. For Walcott, cultural fragments must be united in order to make a new universe civilization based on the divergent Diaspora civilizations of Europe, Africa and Asia.Walcott ‘s method is illustrated when he asserts that his “ poesy purifies speech by mixing and blending the different idioms of the part. In intermixing the lingual differences of autochthonal and imperial signifiers of address, Walcott aspires to lend the sound of his ain speech pattern to the common, multinational, and interethnic linguistic communication of the New World ” ( Pollard 11 ) .
Walcott admits that procedure in “ The Muse of History ” in which he describes the cardinal quandary confronting the Caribbean creative person that is the deficiency of linguistic communication symbols. Consequently his map is to sublimate the linguistic communication without losing the energy of the common address while he uses the initial symbols or the alphabet of the official one.
What creates the new corporate sense of individuality is the creative activity of a new cultural tradition that blends the multiplicity of the part. This will be accomplished through mimicking to the point of get the hanging all the cultural traditions non simply the African or the European. Mimicry is non merely cardinal but it is besides originative since it is “ an act of the imaginativeness ” ( qtd. in Pollard 36 ) which includes something new. Encountered with the loss of history, or the separation from the Old World the creative person should fall back to imaginativeness which is based on miming the fragmented Old World ‘s cultural theoretical accounts. The usage of such types through new contexts helps regenerating the creative person ‘s method. As Burnett suggests, Walcott ‘s “ religion in art is still amazing and beautiful ” ( 103 ) since he believes in the sacredness of the text as words generate a province of hope in the community ‘s hereafter instead than desperation and retaliation by brooding in the yesteryear. Poetry in Walcott -the proficient device used in most of his plays- has a close affinity with faith for spiritual patterns are based on people ‘s religion and his aesthetic of apery comes out of belief, non doubt. Pollard explains:
Merely as spiritual patterns define a communal individuality by promoting people to take part in common rites, he aspires for a poesy that mimics the rites of literature in such a manner as to lend to the devising of a New World individuality. Just as spiritual patterns renew hope through ceremonially acknowledging historical experiences of agony, he aspires to recast poetic rites in order to conceive of an ideal interethnic New World community emerging from the tormented historical experience of colonialism ( 37 ) .
Dream on Monkey Mountain is basically a psychodrama for “ There is a sound psychological footing for every action and emotion ” . ( Barnes 52 ) . It is a dream that seems to take topographic point within the consciousness of Makak, the cardinal figure of the drama every bit good as “ the corporate consciousness of all the characters ” ( Thieme 70 ) .Walcott focuses on the humanity of the Caribbean adult male in general and the black 1 in peculiar. He handles the capable affair subtly while concentrating on the psychological facet of the supporters ‘ quandary. He, moreover, “ draws… upon a vivacious scope of popular Caribbean public presentation manners, which are seamlessly interwoven with modern-day phase engineering and with theatrical conventions from European and other traditions ” ( Baugh 83 ) . As Brenier suggests: the drama ‘s dream construction is “ a moonstruck dream, initiated with redolent music and mummer ” ( 78 ) and is based on passages, deformations of clip and transference between world and phantasy. It sheds visible radiation on the broken consciousness of Felix Hobain ( Makak ) with particular emphasis on the thought of metabolism. Makak ‘s concluding violent death of the white Goddess reveals that his rebellion is chiefly internal, a psychological 1. Identity quest as proposed in the drama is comparative to the geographic expedition of the subconscious and has a close affinity with self-healing. There is a sort of jerk of war or interior struggle in the West Indian people ‘s individuality or consciousness.
By casting visible radiation on the individuality of Makak ‘s “ reduced, race-containing ” ( Brenier 79 ) hero through guesss on his nature and how he should be called, the drama inquiries the West Indian individuality. The drama moreover responds to the discourse whether West Indian individuality is rooted in the Caribbean or instead in Africa. Makak is presented as a adult male under eternal tensenesss and force per unit areas relative to the subjugation he undergoes as his stature is extremely determined by race, coloring material, and linguistic communication. The history of colonialism consequences in a province of racial and cultural confusion in the part particularly that it segregates the part into “ colonial linguistic communication groups ” ( DeLoughrey, Gosson, and Handley 12 ) . Makak undergoes a terrible crisis in his pursuit for personal and societal individuality. It is mostly comparative to holding no sense of history, or accomplishment. Part of the colonial discourse is to presume that the islands are “ a historical, inactive, and idyllic landscapes ” which spurs Walcott to “ retrieve a sense of historicity ” . ( DeLoghrey, Gosson, and Handley 12 ) . Investigating the history of the part leads necessarily to inquiries about origin – the really issue of Makak ‘s examination. However, as Walcott explains, “ nostalgia over a lost history whether African, European or any other, will take us finally to ‘a rejection of the wild landscape ‘ ” ( qtd. in DeLoughrey, Gosson, and Handley ) .The declaration “ comes from beginnings more fabulous and poetic than deep historical cognition ” ( DeLoughrey, Gosson, and Handley 15 ) .
Walcott is a advocate that the sense of belonging and one ‘s cultural individuality are to be explored in more than one position as they take many signifiers including the European and the African. As autochthonal author, Walcott relies on uniting traditions. He interweaves “ the textual profusion of language/race/geography with the know aparting resistances of black/white ” . ( Parker & A ; Starkey 19 ) . Dream on Monkey Mountain begins with Makak, a black wood coal burner who is imprisoned for being rummy and disorderly. The class of the drama becomes the relation of a dream to uncover his disconnected province “ to interrupt with images of heroic pilgrim’s journeies, in order to re-start the interior pursuit for human worth in a civilization subjugated by imperial claims ” ( Parker & A ; Starkey 19-20 ) .Makak ‘s imaginativeness is extended to decapitation of the White Goddess the representative of colonialism and the figure who inspires and enslaves him every bit good. Such act involves exorcizing the theoretical accounts of belonging created by colonialism. Therefore the individuality will be established by killing the division of the West Indian consciousness and citing “ the kiping liquors that lay within the existent and archipelagal landscape of the West Indies ” ( Samad 228 ) . New mergers and applications of originals and myths will take to a sort of metempsychosis of the Caribbean individuality. Walcott endeavours to unite the conflicting traditions of Europe and Africa in an effort to extinguish the sense of freak out and homelessness that are comparative to the loss of individuality in the drama. Makak ‘s disaffection and humiliation are declared when he states that:
MAKAK: I have unrecorded all my life like a wild animal in concealment. Without kid without wife/People bury me like the mist on Monkey Mountain /Is thirty old ages now I have look in no mirror, /Not a pool of cold H2O, when I must imbibe, /I stir my custodies foremost, to interrupt my image. ( I.226 )
He refuses to confront his human image since he is black and fragmented the really facts which reveal that he loathes himself. Makak ‘s longings for self-respect, physical completeness and the sense of belonging to a fatherland make him fantasy. Mostique ‘s confession:
I take what you had, I take the dream you have and I come and seek to sell it. I try to gull them, and they fall on me with sticks, everything and they kill me ( I. 273 )
Has the consequence of doing Makak face the mercenary side of humanity.
Makak biddings his religious foundations:
Like the Cedars of Lebanon,
Like the plantations of Zion,
The custodies of God works me on
Monkey Mountain ( I. 248 )
Spiritually elevated he discerns the remainder in their rootless, dispossessed province “ like a distorted wood, / like trees without names ” ( I. 248 ) . He moreover, spurs them to sing due to their torment and religion “ Sing as you sing/ in the abdomen of the boat ” ( I. 249 ) .
The possibility of a new individuality, for Walcott, is through apery for there are no typical cultural individualities. Walcott focuses on apery or imitation since “ cultural can merely be created out of this cognition of nil ” . ( qtd. in Pollard 34 ) .Walcott contends that apery is the “ necessary, originative, searching, consolidative and passing poetics of the New World ” ( Pollard 34 ) . The creative activity of a cultural individuality with the absence of a nucleus civilization should be through merger of cultural fragments and the insistent imitation of whatever fragment available. The creative activity of a new corporate cultural individuality is through get the hanging the imitation of diversified cultural traditions. The procedure involves creativeness despite the fact that it is imitation.
Makak ‘s individuality pursuit is chiefly within extremely complex Indian civilizations. “ Identity is a matrix of capable places which may belie one another. Indian capable individualities are constituted in a multiplicity of discourses lifting out of constructions of faith, category, caste and gender ” ( Parker & A ; Starkey 13 ) .Such diversenesss lead straight to dichotomy of consciousness or individuality. The double universes of Africa and Europe, or the Black and white have equal weigh on Makak ‘s perceptual experience. Walcott dramatizes the antecedently mentioned universes in his debut to the 2nd portion of the drama “ Two universes ; that makes two bewitching ; they dance all dark and at morning they crowd into the churches to hear mass ; each twenty-four hours the split widens… ” ( II. 277 ) .Due to the duality in the drama, Walcott implies that either option would decidedly ensue in a denial of ego, since both root from cultural and psychological nothingness instead than from the assimilation and fulfillment of individuality signifiers. Makak ‘s freedom comes from “ encompassing instead than get awaying individuality ” ( qtd. in King 268 ) .In the visible radiation of such discourse the drama ‘s capable affair is the quest for individuality and how colonialism harms that spirit.
Makak is an embodiment of the effort to accommodate all resistances to make a curative consequence. Walcott non merely realizes the cultural atomization of the Caribbean individuality but besides aspires for cultural integrity. “ Indicating to new and diversified syncretisms on the footing of a shared pursuit for meanings/roots ” ( Parker & A ; Stanley 23 ) . Walcott as a postcolonial author, seeks to define the rich plurality in his histories to organize a sort of homeless literature who strives to recover disconnected worlds. Walcott asserts the importance of the landscape as a release of the Caribbean histories throughout the drama.
Part of the construction of the drama is comparative to the postcolonial theory in which mentions are made to early European narratives. Such mentions are interwoven with a new Caribbean manner which is based on complexnesss and disaffection of disconnected worlds or individualities.
Walcott ‘s attack is psychological since it is based on originative ‘schizophrenia ‘ which he has cultivated and advocated as an electric merger of the old and the new as stated before. The psychological facet of the Caribbean adult male ‘s predicament who is in pursuit of individuality is demonstrated through different footings such as the antecedently mentioned “ schizophrenic disorder ” , “ psychosis ” and “ neuroticism ” . The epigraph of the two Acts of the Apostless of the drama has many intensions in its mentions to the aforesaid footings.
Therefore in certain psychosis the hallucinated individual, tired of ever being insulted by his devil, one all right twenty-four hours starts hearing the voice of an angel who pays him regards ; but the mockeries do n’t halt for all that, merely from so on, they alternate with praises. This is a defense mechanism but it is besides the terminal of the narrative. The ego is disassociated, and the patient caputs for lunacy ( I. 211 ) .
Due to issues of race and coloring material that ensue from the relationship between the coloniser and the colonized particularly in parts like the Caribbean Makak is psychologically subdued and the result is a province of disaffection and neuroticism:
The Negro enslaved by his lower status, the white adult male enslaved by his high quality likewise behave in conformity with a neurotic orientation. Therefore I have been led to see their disaffection in footings of psychoanalytical categorizations… In the adult male of coloring material there is a changeless attempt to run away from his individualism, to eliminate his ain presence… The attitude of the black adult male toward the white or toward his ain race, frequently duplicates about wholly a configuration of craze, often surrounding on the part of the pathological. ( qtd. in Baugh 83 ) .
This status is embodied in the drama ‘s supporter Makak who lives wholly isolated and alienated in the Monkey Mountain. Though the Charcoal burner has a existent name he can barely retrieve it. The thought that he is a mere monkey or mimic adult male has profoundly influenced him that he is dehumanized by others who ever mock him. For case, the corporal of constabulary satirizes him with mention to the lampoon of the creative activity myth:
In the beginning was the ape and the ape had no name, so God call him adult male. Now there were assorted folks of the ape, it had gorilla, baboon, orange-outang Pan troglodytes, the blue-arsed monkey and the marmoset, and God looked at his handicraft, and saw that it was good. For some of the apes had straightened their anchor and get down walking unsloped, but at that place was one folk unluckily that lingered behind and that was the nigga ( I. 216-17 ) .
Makak is a victim of the European hegemonic authorization which belittles his human individuality. It is contradicted by efforts of individuality averment by the dominated in the Caribbean part. He is overpoweringly occupied with his lower status composite that is imposed on him by the white adult male who imprisons him within the slogan ‘black is ugly, white is beautiful ‘ . He lives as a “ black ugly, hapless… worse than nil ” ( I. 237 )
Despite the fact that he like others disdains himself, Makak has his dreams and aspirations and his ain angel and therein exists his lunacy. “ I suffer from lunacy. I does see things. Liquors does speak to me. All I have is my dreams and they do n’t problem your psyche ( I. 225 ) .
He undergoes hallucinatory tantrums every now and so. It takes the form of a beautiful white adult female who is wholly perfect and idealized unlike his self-loathing image. She has the consequence of raising his ain spirit and arousing the gallantry in him particularly when she sings to him. ‘Lady in Eden, is your old black warrior /the male monarch of Ashanti, Dahomey, Guinea ( I. 228 ) and “ I feel my spinal column straighten, / My manus grow strong ‘ ( I. 229 ) . Makak ‘s Reconstruction of the ego is based on this hallucination or dream. Curiously plenty, to hold that dream is a menace to governments representative of colonialism since it is a make bolding radical note. It creates a sense of horror. It is “ horror at the possible riotous consequence of this dream on the governing ‘order ‘ and the discourse that constitutes it ” ( Olaniyan 104 ) .As Baugh observes the map of the dream is “ purging, conveying him to self-acceptance and psychic integrity ” ( 85 ) .The drama “ becomes the acting-out of all Makak ‘s dream, which draws into itself all the characters of his existent universe ” ( 85 ) .
When the test is set up and Makak in royal glare sits enthroned, history as clip is accused ferociously. It is “ dragged out from the deepest deferrals and accused of holding trampled blackness underfoot ” ( Olaniyan 107 ) .Out of the noteworthy figures in history, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Galileo, Lincoln, Drakeaˆ¦etc. , are all sentenced to decease for they are “ beyond doubt… white ” . In fright of retaliation the oppositions of the present become Alliess and the folks reject all. Makak ‘s uncertainties of his dream means merely that the Afrocentric counter discourse of expressive individuality as a agency of opposition is rejected by Makak.
The one-night dream ends with decapitating the white Goddess, the symbol of the white adult male ‘s subjugation and high quality. Makak ‘s concluding act in which he removes his robe -the African one- implies rejection of the black-white division set by racism. The consequence of such action is let go ofing Makak ‘s prison of psychosis. “ This is the enabling minute of history as myth “ ( Olaniyan 108 ) . He is reconciled to his identity-the true West Indian- and returns contended to Monkey Mountain.
Lord, I have been washed from shore to shore, as a tree in the ocean. The subdivisions of my fingers, the roots of my pess, could grip nil. But now, God they have found land. Let me be swallowed up in mist once more, and allow me be forgotten, so that when the mist unfastened, work forces can look up, at some little glade with a hut, with a little signal of fume, and say ‘Makak lives at that place, Makak lives where he has ever lived, in the dream of his people ‘ ( II. 326 ) .
The dream is religious cleaning of Makak ‘s spirit. It is treble dream as it represents three phases: European, African and West Indian. The binary resistance of inkinesss and Whites is interwoven in the dream as a stage towards release.
Makak ‘s rebellion is basically internal and psychological. It consequences in Makak ‘s credence of his individuality as a adult male with nil shameful to endure from. Though his revolution is non a violent one it does connote rejection of the oppressive forces and averment of the new individuality -the Caribbean individuality. Walcott holds the position that the black adult male should non be dedicated to turn out his equality to his white maestro, but instead his difference.
Walcott objects the divisions of inkinesss on the footing of who has suffered most. He is for a new individuality which is based on the merger of different civilizations and races. His construct is non however based on the African dream though he acknowledges its part as a cardinal phase in the development of the Caribbean individuality. Despite his rejection of the European imperial stereotypes, he admits that European great authoritative literature inspires him. Authentic cultural individuality is through cultural gathering to confront the West Indian lunacy or “ schizophrenic disorder ” ( Olaniyan 110 ) which is presented as a sort of interior battle or opposition through Makak ‘s dream in the drama. Such individuality is comparative to both footings of hybridity and Creolization.
Dream On Monkey Mountain has a complex construction, manipulated astutely by Walcott to show his capable affair of individuality pursuit and the possibility of individuality formation. Just as Walcott advocates that the individuality be created on the footing of diverse cultural, racial or cultural foundations, he is a advocate of doing usage of the Creole in add-on to English in the drama. The Creole is indispensable in Dream and particularly since every island in the Caribbean has its ain syntactic construction and Walcott has to unite all possible Creoles to happen out a compromising solution. Dream has a broad scope of lingual fluctuations or idioms:
MAKAK: Let us travel on, compere. These niggas excessively tired to believe anything once more. Remember, is you all self that is your ain enemy ( I. 250 )
MAKAK: I was a male monarch among shadows. Either the shadows were existent and I was no male monarch, or it is my ain kingliness that created the shadows. Either manner, I am lonely, lost, an old adult male once more. No more. I wanted to go forth this universe. ( II. 304 )
Yes. Oui. Hobain.Sur Morne Macaque, Charbonnier. I does fire and sell coals. And my friend… good, he is dead… Sixty-five old ages I have. And they naming me Makak, for my face, you see? Is as I so ugly. ( II. 322 )
Therefore Walcott is for the betterment of the idiom of the folk following the English form which is learnt by imitation. In other words “ Creole must be apprenticed to English, but the ‘feelings ‘ must be local, must ‘have their roots in [ the author ‘s ] ain Earth ” ( qtd in Olaniyan 112 ) . He states:
Pastoralists of the African resurgence should cognize that what is needed is non new names for old things, or old names for old things but the religion of utilizing the old names afresh, so the bastard as I am, something pickles in me when I see the word Ashanti as with the word Warwickshire, both individually adumbrating my grampss ‘ roots, both baptizing this neither proud nor ashamed asshole, this loanblend, this West Indian ” . ( Walcott Twilight 10 )
Though the capable affair of Dream is deluxe and amply formed the scene of the drama is a low one-A West Indian Island- wherein phase waies play a minor function in the embroidery of the scenes. Walcott asserts that “ the manner should be trim, indispensable as the inside informations of the dream ” ( Walcott Dream 208 ) as the dramatis personae works under desolate conditions. He advocates the impression of “ The Poor Theatre ” ( Olaniyan 112 ) as the Caribbean civilization “ needs saving and revival… a religious definition and an art that can emerge from ( our ) poorness, making its ain elation ” ( qtd. in Olaniyan 112 ) . Spectacle is mostly formed out of the histrion ‘s organic structure and exchange of functions. Out of that plainness of puting emerges a poetic, disputing, extremely complex dramatic discourse which is based on philosophical, theological divergent traditions.
The construct of history as myth or civilization is polar in the drama as it is well presented through the dream and “ the tryst of carnal names to the characters, the symbolic usage of masks, the journey to Africa of the head, and the corporal ‘s consistent theatrical overkill and rhetorical surplus ” ( Olaniyan 113 ) .
The construction of the drama is derived from “ a mulatto manner ” as stated by Walcott or hybridity of construction. Dream is built on autochthonal local cloth including the characters, vocals, dances and Creole associated with rational foreign allusions from diverse literary and classical beginnings. Walcott asserts that “ The mimetic, the narrative, and dance component is strong on one side, and the literary the classical tradition is strong on the other ” ( qtd. in Olaniyan 113 ) .Walcott ‘s manner in the drama is described by Olaniyan as “ Coherent distortion ” ( 113 ) which is clarified by Allen Weiss as “ the procedure whereby the signifier, the facticity of the universe is shattered by practice, with the consequence that a new significance ensues. The ‘coherency ‘ the equality between marks ; the ‘deformation ‘ achieves the differences between marks ” “ It is merely this ‘coherent distortion ‘ of available meanings which arranges them in a new sense and takes non merely the listeners but the speech production topic as good through a decisive measure ” ( qtd in Olaniyan 114 ) .
It merely destabilizes marks and challenges the order of significance and categorization in an effort to withstand forces. Such eclectic method helps making Caribbean cultural individuality. The construction, briefly, depends on contrast between the different elements involved.
Part of the writer ‘s construction is to utilize ritual and symbolic elements. For case the drama opens with a sophisticated mummer in which the scene, illuming, motion, dance and vocal are merged to exemplify the capable affair of the drama. The representation falls down into a “ call-and-response plaint ” ( Thieme 70 ) Sung by a Conteur and chorus for the intent of presenting the black charcoal-burner Makak the supporter of the drama. Call and response give blowhole to calypso. Caribbean fairy-slipper, as Rohlehr asserts, derives “ from an older west African tradition of societal commentary, in which congratulations, incrimination or derision were conveyed in vocal ” ( qtd. in Davis 5 )
Harmonizing to Walcott “ I live with a structured formal public sort of look in fairy-slipper “ ( qtd. in Baer 62 ) .The emotion of the present call and response is lament which includes lines of recitative signifier and the chorus response.
CONTEUR: Mooma, mooma
Your boy in de gaol a’ready,
Your boy in de gaol a’ready,
Take a towel and band your belly
Chorus: Mooma, mooma,
Your boy in de gaol a’ready
Your boy in de gaol a’ready
Take a towel and band your belly.
CONTEUR: I pass by the constabulary station,
Cipher to subscribe de bail bond.
Chorus: Mooma, do n’t shout
Your boy in de gaol a’ready
I pass by the constabulary station,
Cipher to subscribe de bail bond.
CONTEUR: 40 yearss before the Carnival, Godhead,
I dream I see me funeral.
Chorus: Mooma, mooma,
Your boy in de gaol a’ready,
Take a towel and band your belly. ( I. 213 )
Therefore the drama has been introduced in “ non-verbal ” followed by an “ unwritten common people context ” ( Thieme 71 ) before the induction of the drama ‘s action. The audience and reader ‘s responses are indispensable as “ the text becomes, a multiple form of an synergistic integrity in which the receiver ‘s frame of response and apprehension is cardinal for the Reconstruction of the text ” ( Parker & A ; Starkey 9 ) .
When the action returns, the construction of the drama develops into elements that depend on music, mummer and mask. It besides includes, singing, dancing and ad-lib dance. Performance is important in the drama since it alludes to the autochthonal destabilization or opposition of hegemonic governments or colonial mind. Dream On Monkey Mountain is a metatheatrical piece in which common people elements combine in a intercrossed merger of signifiers to cast visible radiation on the individuality quest, crisis and Reconstruction. The construction is hence closely related to the issue of the drama.
Since there is a close affinity between Walcott ‘s poesy and dramas as he considers “ a drama as poesy in that it is metaphoric in construct and theatrical production, in the characters no less than in the quality of its linguistic communication ” ( Baugh 2 ) therefore the metaphor is seen in the drama in Makak the supporter “ an old adult male who looked like an ape, and above his shoulder, a unit of ammunition white full Moon ” ( Baer 38 ) .
The autobiographical component is sunken in the voices of his characters in Dream -as good as in the remainder of his plays- for they express themselves and mention to their societal quandary and enthusiasm in their ain footings. Poetry represents the interior life of the character whereas the idiom is declarative of the outward life of action. For him “ the lyric impulse by and large needs to be fortified by dramatic experience and the contrary should be true ” ( Baer 93 ) .
Part of his construction is to utilize big verbal gestures which express his fancy of the Caribbean in an effort to unify two conflicting dispositions in the drama. The first 1 is “ towards a theatre ‘essential and trim ‘ , trusting on gesture and reduced ‘almost to an fluency of linguistic communication ‘ , and the other towards fluency and verbal profusion ” ( Baer 48 ) . The former is identified with the unwritten African common people traditions and the latter with the European 1s. Therefore, he is for “ plangency and the verbal gesture ” ( Baugh 26 ) .
AS Dream ‘s construction is deluxe for the drama is rich in variant diverse devices the prankster is of primary importance in the drama. The trickster figure of Ananse -whose signifier is composed of the terpsichorean and a character like ‘the figure of Baron Samedi ” – is presented in the prologue as portion of the common people tradition. The drama is hence set in an ambiance of different contradictory positions. Furthermore, symbols of the Moon, the membranophone and the volcanic mountain are of paramount importance since they represent Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean severally. The white adult female is rejected by Makak finally as she stands for Cultural stagnancy and nothingness. He kills her to free himself of the polarized yesteryear.
The rich construction of the drama is subtly employed by the playwright to exemplify Makak ‘s journey of self-fulfillment. Walcott ‘s usage of diverse complicated structural devices demonstrates and explains the phases of individuality quest which end in Makak ‘s self-definition. Ultimately he is able to retrieve his existent name Felix Hobain. The procedure of identity- recovery is exemplifying of the really fact that Makak has undergone an interior jerk of war to unify his witting feelings with the unconscious 1s. Such reformation is declarative of Makak ‘s ultimate credence of his individuality.
