Derek Walcott Uses Poetry to Explore Themes of Ethnicity Essay

I agree with the fact that Walcott uses verse line to research themes of ethni city, cultural flag waving and policy-making inequality. However, these arent the only themes we find in his poetry. He excessively makes use of themes such as life and death and morality. Sea Canes is nonpareil of the rimes which includes the themes mentioned above.In Sea Canes the poet is represent notice a embellish in which he can divulge sea canes and animals, all(prenominal) of this in a miserable automated teller machine Half of my friends are stagnant. Here he also mentions religion and disagrees with it by stating that religion is not necessary to respect the dead. He prefers to remember them exactly how they were, instead of see dead flock as something magic and much nobler than the alive. As he looks to the early(a) side of the sea canes he views a boundary between the humankind of the living and the humanity of the dead. He metaphorically says that the owls act as us human s leaving the world of the living to enter the mystical world of the dead.In The Hawk we can posit clear examples of ethnicity, cultural chauvinism and the confrontation between western and Caribbean culture. Here he mentions the carnival in Trinidad, and says that the only ones that should understand it are the locals. Later in the poem, Walcott mentions the ethnicity and the races of the sight at the carnival. The negroes, bastards, mestizos, proud of their Spanish line of credit, all the people with mixed bloodline who are proud of their Spanish blood, not their native blood. Here Walcott is referring to the colonial great powers and their endless control over the Caribbean population. He also compares the Yucatan peninsula with Trinidad. He states that Yucatan has a magnificent landscape while Trinidad has been destroyed during colonialism. Walcott describes the natives as toothless tigers, erst powerful and strong that now nothing more than a big defenseless cat Cari bs, standardized toothless tigers. Here we can think cultural chauvinism, throughout The Hawk he criticizes colonialism by describing its consequences and shows an enormous patriotism for the Caribbean islands. pull up J contains also contains themes of cultural chauvinism and life and death. He starts the poem by describing his house in Saint Lucia. He describes the beautiful landscape, nature and the surrounding found in the Caribbean. He subliminally compares the western landscape with the one in the Caribbean, exaggerating the beauty of the equatorial islands compared with Europe. He unexpectedly makes a stand change and commences to talk about his dead friend Gregorias. He describes him very(prenominal) stormily and compares him with famous painters from the renaissance brown cherubs of Giotto and Masaccio, which makes us assume he was a magnificent painter. He feels tremendous affection for him and his death, as he tells us, has dramatically changed Walcotts life.The tr avel is another poem which describes Walcotts pang due to the loss of friends. Here he talks about his first wife. He used to walk with her up the hills, until the twenty-four hours she fell ill You were weak and lame, So you never came. She then had other interests and at long last when she died, Walcott felt completely alone. He repeatedly expresses his grief of having lost his beloved wife and declares that now that shes dead, these walks are very different for him.The Bright Field is a further illustration of cultural patriotism and the inconformity of the European culture. The poem begins in capital of the United Kingdom introducing us to a man steeled against the power of London. Probably the man is Walcott himself, criticizing the citizens and the city. He says that the city is depressing and most of the time people are found in cemeteries or in the underground. In the second dissever he talks about the British Empire, the empire that their sun that would not bunch was going down the largest empire in history was now diminishing and weak. This poem is again about Walcotts cultural past and the former colonial powers that once inhabited his islands.I agree that Derek Walcott uses his poetry to explore ethnicity, cultural chauvinism and political inequality, he also talks a lot about the colonial twine of the British and the French had on the western hemisphere Indies. Death appears frequently too reminding us that his personal life also plays an significant role in his poetry.