Untangling the Thematic Threads: Derek Walcott's Poetry‪.‬

Derek Walcott's poetry is marked by socio-literary configurations that set up a variety of personas in his corpus of works. One of the more predominant aspects of his writing is the treatment of contrarieties that emanate from countervailing images of self in which a division is expressed or implied. For the purpose of this paper the "divided self' will be taken to mean a state of being that arises from a person's psycho-social awareness of biological admixing of several races, or the sense of socio-cultural plurality* The pull between dominant and competing values, derived from the races or cultures, has a tendency to lead to entropy. This condition of dissipating elements and moving them toward the creation of a new or different "whole," creates many tensions. Leopold Sedar Senghor writes of this cultural change which confronts the colonized man, and which shakes the very foundation of his being: Walcott is artistically adept at exploring the many layers of the theme "the divided self." He examines it from an angle of vision which reflects that which is comic, tragic, cosmic and personal. Broadly speaking, Walcott's writing incorporates themes of identity, exile, isolation, birth, death, creation, the growth of national consciousness and the portrait of the artist. The journey motif is the hub of these themes and links them in a central way to the poet's persona! development as a craftsman. Emanating from Walcott's work is also a blend of sadness, melancholia and nostalgia which characterize the West Indian psyche and landscape. The prementioned themes are found in much of Walcott's poetry, in texts such as In a Green Night, The Castaway. The Golf, Sea Grew. Another Life, Star Apple Kingdom and The Fortunate Traveler.