Omeros

Helen, arguably the most important character in Omeros, is a multilayered creation. She is a beautiful woman who turns the head of every man on Saint Lucia, she represents the island itself, and she is the heart of Walcott’s Homeric allegory.

Helen is introduced to readers through the desire of patrons in the bar—an objectifying perspective that highlights how Helen’s beauty causes her problems in Saint Lucia’s misogynistic society. Helen quits her job because she refuses to let customers grope her and is criticized as overly proud and arrogant for her refusal to bow before male demands. Of all the male characters in the novel, only Achille grasps that Helen is not at fault for being beautiful, nor is she to blame for men’s lust. Achille’s ability to empathize with Helen suggests why she loves him despite their troubles.

Like her epic antecedent, Helen of Troy, Helen is caught between two men. Hector and Achille vie for her affection, causing a rift between two friends that threatens the small community. However, the Homeric analogy does not always fit perfectly. Helen in Omeros has more agency than Helen of Troy. Homer’s Helen is essentially a prize: Her love affair with Paris is precipitated by divine intervention. Walcott’s Helen, in contrast, chooses to leave Achille for Hector. After Hector’s death, she chooses to reunite with Achille.

Helen’s connection to the Plunkett family demonstrates her character’s symbolic and literary roles. Maud pities Helen, empathizing with her strife in a patriarchal society while resenting the theft of her dress. Dennis, meanwhile, transforms his sexual desire for Helen into colonial guilt. He turns Helen into a representation of the island; the gift he wants to give Helen is a history of Saint Lucia. For Dennis, then, Helen becomes an inspiring muse. Although she has never spoken to him about her ancestors, enslavement, or the island’s colonial past, Helen’s beauty—and the beauty of the island—crystallizes his disillusionment with Britain’s myth of empire and his own complicity. Helen does not participate in Dennis’s epiphanies. Instead, by using Helen as a literary device, Dennis and Derek rob her of her agency. They want to write Helen’s story, rather than allow her to dictate her own fate.

Eventually, Achille, Derek, and Dennis reach the understanding that Helen cannot symbolize the colonial history of the island. They realize that their attempts to turn Helen into something more than just a woman—something more than she ever asked to be—is an imposition that says more about them than it does about her. The closing passages of the poem achieve catharsis through the characters’ acceptance that Helen—and thus Saint Lucia—has its own agency and volition. In the meantime, Helen’s pregnancy hints at the future; she will not allow this child to be objectified as she has been. Helen’s pregnancy is an optimistic symbol of potential.

Dennis and Maud are outsiders to Saint Lucia. Whereas Achille, Helen, Hector, and narrator Derek were born and raised on the island, the Plunketts are white British retirees with different relationships to the island’s history. Maud is Irish; as Derek notes, her homeland has a long history of British colonialism and oppression. Dennis, on the other hand, is English and was a soldier in the British Army—he is institutionally bound to the military force that once colonized Saint Lucia. In this sense, Dennis functions as a foil to Achille. Whereas Achille confronts the generational trauma that colonialism inflicted on his family, Dennis experiences immense guilt about being part of the forces that inflicted this violence in the 19th century. Dennis hoped to escape the drudgery of his life in Britain and the violent memories of his WWII experience by retiring in Saint Lucia; in response to his revelations about Britain’s hollow myth of empire, he becomes obsessed with researching history.

Dennis distances himself from anything British. He refuses to join ex-pat clubs on the island, which he regards as a hotbed for snobbery and class prejudice. However, his outsider status in the small town remains, reminding him of his complicity in the machine of British imperialism. When he speaks, his voice often defaults to a militaristic bark that seems to be patronizing the local people. In his anxiety, he fixates on Helen as a symbol of the island. He hopes to write a past of Saint Lucia for her, filling in the gaps that he believes may have been caused by colonialism.

The confused nature of Dennis’s desire for Helen and his obsessive research isolate him from his dying wife. During Maud’s last days, she rereads his old love letters while he is buried in books. Poring over other people’s history means losing the chance to relive his own with the woman he loves. After Maud’s death, Dennis’s grieving independence ingratiates him into the community. He comes to see Helen as an individual because he no longer needs to see her as a symbol. The compassion of his neighbors erodes his outsider status, and he becomes a part of the town.