Omeros

Achille settles into the village. He eats and drinks traditional food and listens to the “tribe’s triumphal sorrow” (139). Though he tries to call on the gods, they do not speak to him. He feels separate from this village of his ancestors. Withdrawing into himself, he misses the sea and his old life. He speaks to the river, asking it to help him forget the future—both his own future on Saint Lucia and the pain that he knows will be inflicted on his father’s generation. Achille’s loneliness and isolation cause many of the villagers to avoid him. One night, Achille dreams about walking across the seabed, all the way back to Saint Lucia. He believes that he will cross time and space to return home. When he wakes up, however, he is still in the village. A feast is held, and Achille notes the “same”: the costumes, dances, and the celebrations.

The peace of the village is interrupted by a raid. Achille’s father and the other villagers are kidnapped so that they can be enslaved. Achille is not captured. After seeing the kidnapped people being taken away, he explores the empty village where the doors are “like open graves” (145). He finds a child, all alone, and then enters a hut. Seven Seas is inside. Seven Seas is beset by grief, but when Achille speaks to him, Seven Seas does not see the dead people or the women in the village. Achille is sad. He grieves at his inability to change the destiny of the villagers. He knows that, having been enslaved, they face a cruel future across the ocean. Arming himself with an oar, Achille tries to save the kidnapped people. He attacks an archer but then grieves for the man he has killed. Before he can free anyone, Achille trips over a vine and blacks out.

Achille hears a griot, or a poet who documents the history of the community, singing a “prophetic song of sorrow” about the captured people (148).

According to the narrator, the enslaved people survived the crossing of the Atlantic, but they were all separated. The tribe was fractured into a collection of individuals, each a tribe by themselves. Derek describes the horrifying ordeal of the Middle Passage, in which enslaved people were put to work on ships. They scratched their names into the wood to cling to their identities. By the time they crossed to the Americas, however, they had become shadows of their old selves, losing their names. On the other side of the ocean, enslaved people form a new community out of their shared suffering. They grieve all they left, remembering their old lives through the tools they are given that remind them of home. As much as they try to remember their old gods, their culture and language fade away.

The narrative returns to the present.

In Hector’s house, Helen is in the yard, gathering laundry. She hears a bird singing and wishes that it would be quiet. The narrator compares Helen to Penelope, grieving because she fears that Achille (like Odysseus) has been lost at sea. At night, Helen dreams of Achille and masturbates.

Philoctete also fears that Achille has drowned. He takes his worries to Seven Seas, who assures Philoctete that Achille has simply gone to Africa in search of “his name and his soul” (154). Philoctete is more open to miracles than before.

Meanwhile, via the narrator’s references to the magic of Circe, Achille runs home across the ocean and across the centuries, passing the “wounded and drowned” midshipman on his way (156). Achille wakes up on his boat, suffering from heatstroke.

Achille’s mate is on the boat. He has been standing guard over the unconscious Achille all night. Achille tries to explain that he traveled to Africa but realizes that he must have been hallucinating due to sunstroke. The mate felt obligated to help Achille, who gave him a job in spite of his drunkenness. While Achille was unconscious, the mate also caught a giant kingfish. They will sell the fish for a good price back in the harbor. Sailing back to land, Achille watches a frigate bird stealing fish from the mouths of other seabirds, which seem like “white slaves for a black king” (158). As the birds fly, Achille is sure that he sees the name “Afolabe” written by their wings. The boat returns, and a triumphant Achille shows off the giant fish while the mate blows a conch shell. Philoctete hears the sound and prays to God, asking for his doubt to be forgiven. The other fishermen help Achille ashore. Helen is at the docks. She sees Achille but leaves without a word.

As he washes his canoe, Achille sings the song “Buffalo Soldier” by Bob Marley. He imagines being one of these soldiers—members of the all-Black United States Army regiments formed after the Civil War that served primarily on the Western Frontier. He thinks about the Indigenous peoples of North America, imagining “Red Indians bouncing to a West Indian rhythm” (161). Achille imagines being a colonist, killing native trees with his oar or his rifle. Later, Achille rakes the leaves in Seven Seas’s yard. He spots an iguana; the lizard frightens him, but Seven Seas distracts him with stories of the Aruac people who once lived on Saint Lucia. The scientific names of the local trees refer to these people. Going back to his raking, Achille hits a stone. The stone has a face carved on it—it is seemingly a traditional totem—but Achilles picks it up and throws it away. Seven Seas describes his travels and the importance of “certain names” (164).

The narrator, Derek, speaks about his late mother. She grew old and began to develop dementia. Derek describes the home where she lived, populated by other elderly people who were also losing their memories due to the “humiliations of time” (165). Derek has to remind his mother who she is and that she has three children. Just as he is about to leave, she remembers his name and mentions his father, Warwick. Derek leaves, exploring the town where he grew up. Derek has been away for some time, and now the place feels strange to him. He cannot understand the local people and their language as he once did. Still, however, he feels a sense of belonging. Meanwhile, Achille has spent the day at sea. He returns to the shore.