Walcott’s Diverse View of History in Omeros

Question: Look over the following references: what does Walcott's view of history seem to be in Omeros? Is it consistent throughout? Does it need to be?
  • 13—In Omeros, Walcott catches the surf line across the sea and centuries.
  • 15—The past always suffers and stares.
  • 19, 22—Philoctete’s wound as the burden of colonial history/slavery.
  • 25—Plunkett’s view of British colonial activity: "All history/ in a dusty Beefeater’s gin."
  • 30-32-Plunkett’s notion that St. Lucia needs a history in honor of Helen’s beauty.
  • 35-Helen imagines the old Battle of Saints.
  • 43,46—Faith in the old bottle and the shipwreck as trust in the past.
  • 59-60—The colonial atrocities of Bennett & Ward
  • 77ff.—Midshipman Plunkett and the Battle of the Saints
  • 87-88—The Major’s maps and Maud’s shroud
  • 92ff., esp. 95-97—Plunkett’s historical project and the Homeric connection, also vows of empire
  • 98-99—Plunkett’s archeological dig and History "written by a flag of smoke."
  • 101-103—Plunkett’s imagined ancestor/son & the infidelity of his history. "The great events of the world would happen elsewhere."
  • 112-113—Plunkett’s history project as a boy: "In those days, history was easy."
  • 130—Achille drags up a body like the ghost of his father
  • 133ff.—Achille’s dream journey to African past
  • 137-138—What the Caribbean has forgotten in naming
  • 140ff.—History ahead
  • 155-156—300 years pass for Achille
  • 161-164—Achille’s vision of himself as a Buffalo solider & his questions about the Aruac artifact.
  • 174ff.—The North American history of empire
  • 177-179—The connections between Greek, Roman, and American slavery.
  • 182-184—Museums, where "Art has surrendered/ to History with its whiff of formaldehyde."
  • Bk 5—Walcott encounters the colonial past in Europe (see more below)
  • 217—No power to change the imperial past
  • 227-229—History as nostalgia; poetry’s role in this.
  • 238-239—The history of the plant carried in the stomach of the swift.
  • 242ff.—Ma Kilman’s return to origins to obtain the medicine
  • 247-248—Eden and return for Philoctete
  • 258—The Major walks in the footsteps of the Midshipman.
  • 271—No need for history or literature to understand Helen.
  • 276-277—Philoctete’s return to pain at/for the past.
  • 288--Walcott and Seven Seas look on the Battle of Saints
  • 295-297—The sea and history
  • 303ff.—The Major recalls past moments with Maud
  • 309—The Major gives up his history of the island.
  • 312—312—The problem of framing the island in epic, classical past
  • 313-315—The Battle of the Saints and its losses.
  • 319—319—East and West interlocked.
Omeros Omeros

Book 5 The Lessons of The Great Cities

  • Lisbon The division of the New World was once between Portugal and Spain, but now on this coast the imperial past has been forgotten.
  • London The Thames as at the center of empire which ignores its margins, and the London tours are mythmakers
  • Dublin They have a history, language, and faith, but also violence and division.
  • Greece Has an epic, mythic connection with the poem; the Odysseus myth reread.
  • Istanbul & Venice The alienation of European artistic heritage.Rome SlaveryConcord The colonial action of the U.S. toward African slaves and Indians.
  • Boston Harbor The New England past had its own chains in the Puritans and the Transcendentalists.
  • Toronto Polish poets in exile.