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Assignment & presentation of post colonial literature
Submitted to

sir junaid choudary

Submitted by

Aqsa Baloch syeda fatima 317 Sidra Naz 315
12111502-008/305

Topic

A city’s death by fire as post colonial work of Derek Walcott

Introduction
Derek Walcott is a Nobel laureate and preeminent West Indian literary figure and is included among the
leading contemporary English-language writers of poetry and drama
...
Moreover, he examines these subjects in a manner that leads to psychological and moral
insights pertinent not only to the clash of Western and Caribbean culture, but to the universal human
condition
...

Walcott's poetry, particularly in In a Green Night (1962), Another Life (1973), and Omeros (1989), is
celebrated for its dazzling use of sophisticated poetic forms, heartfelt selfexamination,and evocative
descriptions of Caribbean life
...
He published his first
poem in the local newspaper at the age of 14
...
Walcott’s
Major breakthrough came with the collection In a Green Night: Poems 1948-1960 (1962), a book which
celebrates the Caribbean and its history as well as investigates the scars of colonialism and postcolonialism
...
His recent collections include Tiepolo’s Hound (2000), The Prodigal (2004),
Selected Poems (edited by Edward Baugh, 2007) and White Egrets
(2010)
...
The Nobel committee depicted his
Work as “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a
Multicultural commitment
...
Born of mixed European and African
heritage, he uses literature to explore themes of ethnicity, cultural chauvinism, and political inequality
...
Having learned English as a second language, and acutely aware of its

status as the language of colonial power, Walcott has assimilated the bulk of the Western literary
canon—from Greek epics to modernism—skillfully employing its
Techniques and traditions in his works, while never losing sight of his Caribbean identity
...
Since the 1950s Walcott has divided his time between Boston, New York, and Saint Lucia
...

According to Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor Arthur Vogelsang, “These continuingpolarities
shoot an electricity to each other which is questioning and beautiful and which helps form a vision
altogether Caribbean and international, personal (him to you, you to him),independent, and essential
for readers of contemporary literature on all the continents
...
”
Walcott is also a renowned playwright
...
” Walcott’s
plays generally treat aspects of the West Indian experience, often dealing with the socio-political
and epistemological implications of post-colonialism and drawing upon various forms such as
the fable, allegory, folk and morality play
...
In addition to his Nobel Prize, Walcott’s honors include a MacArthur
Foundation “genius” award, a Royal Society of Literature Award, and, in 1988, the Queen’s
Medal for Poetry
...
He is Professor of Poetry at Essex University
...
Teacher at St
...
Lucia, West Indies, 1947-50
and 1954, Grenada Boys' Secondary School, St
...
Feature writer, 1960-62, and drama critic, 1963-68, for
Trinidad Guardian (Port-of-Spain, Trinidad); feature writer for Public Opinion (Kingston),
1956-57
...
Lucia Arts Guild, 1950, and Basement Theatre, Port-of-Spain,
Trinidad; founding director of Little Carib Theatre Workshop (later Trinidad Theatre Workshop),
1959-76; Boston University, assistant professor of creative writing, 1981, visiting professor,
1985, currently professor of English
...
Also lecturer at Rutgers University and Yale University
...

All day I walked abroad among the rubbled tales,
Shocked at each wall that stood on the street like a liar;
Loud was the bird-rocked sky, and all the clouds were bales

Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire
...


Themes of poems
Disillusion
Sadness
Destruction
when the fire consumes the city ,its heritage such as buildings & daily activities of city is
completely destroyed and which cannot be brought back to originl form
Persona

talks of faiths that were snapped like wire

Symbolic representation 1 are the circumstance in which poem had written (sullen picture of sadness
...
The persona talks of “faiths
that were snapped like wire” (line 4) due to the city’s death
...

The intensity of the loss is captured in the personification in the title of the poem “A City’s death by
Fire”
...
However, the metaphor captures the
existence of the town which in totality is like an organism that has life
...

The poem is also effective in its communicating due to use of imagery
...
The fire is referred to as the “hot
gospeller”, an indication of the fire’s might and the manner in which it widely spread like the way gospel
is spread
...
Together with the metaphor of ‘hills that were flocks of faith”
(line11) which gives the picture of many sheep grazing in peace, help draw a sharp contrast between the
persona’s “wooden world” and the natural world which is not affected by the fire
...
Therefore to alter
persona’s mistaken faith in manmade world, his world has to go through a transformation captured in
the image enhancing allusion of “baptism by fire”
...
People’s faith in their indestructible world is suddenly broken and thus their pain as their
belief is destroyed
...
The walls
give a false picture of the reality; of the city as it were before its destruction and which cannot now be
brought back to life
...

Diction
The poem is very specific in all of its diction and word choices
...
It’s almost as if the fire is a
purging sort of rebirth for the entire, which alludes to the story of Jesus Christ’s Crucifixion and him
rising from the grave three days later
...


Derek Walcott as post colonial writer
Walcott explores in his writing the processes of identity-making in the colonial and postcolonial
Caribbean and the complex connections between Caribbean identities and the Caribbean Sea and
landscape
...

The intricate relationships between the colonized and the colonizer and the ways in which the
Caribbean self embraces and is split between different places and loyalties are central themes of
Walcott‘s writings
...


For Walcott, past colonial and racial divisions constitute the crux of Caribbean identity, and the
question of the divided nature of the postcolonial self is central to his intellectual quest
...
Two worlds; that makes two bewitching;
they dance all night and at dawn they crowd into the churches to hear Mass; each day the split
widens
...
‖
For Walcott, the Caribbean writer breathes two different traditions, namely the African and the
European traditions
...

Contemporary French-Caribbean créolistes also emphasize a Caribbean identity that ―embraces all
strands that have contributed to the making of Antillean
...
Their struggle for identity
...

Clashes of cultures

Walcott's poetry brims with two themes- Methodism and spirituality- which highlights the role of
religion and Church in exploring the Caribbean history in a Colonial and Post-Colonial context and
Methodism was mainly concerned with the reformation of Church
...
After the withdrawal of colonial
the Caribbean islands were fragmented as they had no unified history or identity
...
Walcott as a poet represented through his poetic forms the unfortunate encounters of p
and islands with alien, hostile forces
...

1
...

3
...

5
...


Loss of history
Story of expatriates
Caribbean island after colonial powers
Walcott’s struggle for his identity
Subaltern identities of ceruleans
Biographical elements in poem

Lines from poem shows colonial effect
“Faiths that were snapped like wire”
Refers towards when Walcott’s father changed him in christain
...


“Torn open by looting, and white, in spite of the fire
...

It is very important in any context (Commonwealth, Third World and Post-Colonial) to understand that a
major constituent of colonial experience has been the loss of cultural roots and psychic or emotional
tradition, along with the loss of indigenous linguistic expression
...
The empire in its
anxiety to maintain its hold on the colonies had developed means which taught disrespect to their own
age old ways of life and thinking and in their place proclaimed its civilizing mission acting on God's
behalf
...
And in different colonial settings and landscapes, the poets created great poetry
out of memory, displacement, loss of history, exile, brutality, neglect and through the celebration of
rejected or little known aspects of environment, nature, seasons and daily cycle of life
...
Lucia where he was born
...
Everything in
Walcott’s poetry minutely evokes the ingredients of the West Indian past- the chequered histories,
towns trying to imitate suburban American communities, the waves of conquests (beginning 16th
century) by Spain, Netherlands, France, Britain, the African slave trade, the influx of cheap labor from
India and China, the confusion of languages, the friction arising from different, often colliding cultural
and religious practices, customs, eating habits and ways of living, etc
...
Walcott’s poetry creates new and powerful symbols, one among them being the
sea, as a repository and source of the land’s passage through monumental mutations
...




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