Omeros

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death and racism.

Omeros, a poem about suffering, appropriately begins with a depiction of pain. Philoctete has a wound on his ankle that refuses to heal. The wound is symbolic—a metaphor for the suffering caused by “the chained ankles / of his grandfathers” (19). Philoctete does not know how to heal, a dilemma faced by many other characters in the poem, who also feel profound trauma without resolution. This suffering is a cycle caused by post-colonial reality. The island has been shaped by colonialism: Contemporary buildings stand on the old outposts of colonial control, while the museum is filled with artifacts from shipwrecked galleons that narrow the history of Saint Lucia into of the “far too simple” story of colonization (43). Characters’ physical and emotional injuries point at a wound at the center of the community itself—it echoes across generations, is “still unhealed” (9), and stems from a failure to reconcile the past with the present.

As the narrator of the poem, Derek sets out to trace the history of the cycle of suffering. Using Homeric resonances, he calls this “a masochistic odyssey through the Empire” (90). The odyssey is also through his own personal history: his tense relationship with his late father and his vague guilt over the partners and children he has abandoned in the name of art.