Maritime Discourse and the Bi-Part-Soul in Derek Walcott’s Omeros

Abstract This article examines the extent to which Derek Walcott’s epic poem, Omeros, captures the challenges of maritime activities and the notions of home and return for African and Caribbean identities in transit. It argues that Walcott draws from Homer’s Illiad to represent the complicated history of the Caribbean through episodes of clashes among Western nations fighting for new territories in order to redefine their superpower statuses. Basing my arguments on an ecocritical theoretical stance, the article interrogates the characters’ manifestation and exploration of their bi-part souls through rational and spiritual engagements with their immediate environments and cross-cultural encounters. The article starts from the idea that landscape and seascape images in Omeros articulate perspectives of self-definition and identification by reconstructing historical, socio-cultural, religious and political spaces. As such, Walcott’s St Lucia in the poem is a hub for post-colonial encounters where relationships between individuals and the collective are constructed. Furthermore, the article explores Walcott’s recourse to cultural history and memory to argue that he blends language, storytelling and mythology to represent characters whose fate and destinies are determined by the gods of the landscape and the seascape. By examining the representation of the rational and spiritual parts of Walcott’s characters, it concludes that the sea in the archipelago is indispensable as the moon and the sun because of its interconnectivity of live substances and healing potentials. This is in line with the tenets of ecocriticism which plead for the erasure of existential boundaries between humans and other living species in their communities.