Omeros

Part 4 is a significant departure in two significant ways. First, the action of the poem moves away from Saint Lucia and spreads out to the edge of the “frayed empire” (170). Second, Derek Walcott, the writer and narrator of the poem, centers himself and his experiences for the first time. These elements are linked, as Derek travels across the world to help him to write about his homeland. This voyage, much like Achille’s journey in Part 3, is about establishing personal identity. Within Omeros, Derek needs to understand himself and establish his credentials as a poet before he can write about Saint Lucia. Outside the work, the description of Derek’s peregrinations allows him to more literally continue Situating Post-Colonial Pain in a Western Literary Context. These multifaceted trajectories, each of which is about belonging, are signaled in Chapter 33 via a prolonged shift away from the poem’s hexameter. Here, the word “house” is repeated like a refrain, illustrating this search for a home. Rhyming couplets intensify relentlessness, as Derek grows the poetic confidence to declare himself the authorial voice for post-colonial trauma in Saint Lucia. He is showing the audience and himself that he is worthy of voicing these people’s pain and that the poem is “becoming home” (174).

Derek’s journey into the post-colonial struggle of Saint Lucia exposes him to similar colonial struggles around the world—The Cycle of Suffering that the poem is working to disrupt. The colonization of the Americas and the plight of the Indigenous peoples in the 19th century provide him with a framework for understanding struggle and resistance. Notably, he focuses his poetic lens on Catherine Weldon, a real Swiss American artist and activist who became famous for her involvement with the National Indian Defense Association. Her activism was born out of empathy and rage; though she was an outsider, she fought against colonial violence. In Weldon, Derek finds a vessel for his own emotions. Though he is from Saint Lucia, he often feels like an outsider, so figures like Weldon show how he might fight his own battles against the “abstract universals / of deceit” (180). Derek’s tactics and beliefs may not match Weldon’s exactly, but she provides insight into his identity. As much as Derek sees himself in Achille, he also finds himself in Catherine; his breakthrough is resolving these kaleidoscopic identities into a single whole.

Derek assembles multiple points of reference to construct a poetic theory of Saint Lucian identity—a process he compares to raking “the leaves of the tribe into one fire” (185). This is a broad project of national identity but also a deeply personal quest of self-discovery. Derek’s global points of reference include history, such as the plight of the Indigenous peoples of North America, as well as the efforts of individuals, such as Weldon. Later, these will combine with the canon of Western literature. Meanwhile, Derek’s conversations with his father emphasize the individual nature of the journey, while oblique references to romantic partners and children hint at the cost Derek that feels he must pay to understand himself and his people. He may not consider himself a good man, but he believes that his journey has worth, so he must cross “the bridge of self-contempt” (187).