This brief analysis shall examine Derek Walcott’s poem, Crusoe’s Journal. The overall subject of the poem is inspired from Daniel Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe, and reflects a tail of British imperialism with the colonizers’ triumphing over the natives. Walcott’s poem takes on a similar tone and style and illustrates the moral difficulties involved within human consciousness.
The poem begins with poetic observation into the simplicity of the smallest tools that could possibly be a metaphor for the lives of natives who live the life amongst these tools within simplicity. In support of this point, the poem goes on to explicitly link this simple lifestyle to the native population ‘like Christofer he bears/ in speech mnemonic as a missionary's/the Word to savages’. Here, Walcott refers to the exploits of Christopher Columbus who notably ventured to the Americas in search of wealth and to occupy or conquer land in the name of Spain. Whilst relatively harmless in principle, Walcott is referring to the actuality of the events that came to pass in which native populations were subjected to slavery and forced to accept Spanish rule and belief systems; this is evident from the use of ‘Word to savages’, indicating the word of God pressed onto the native populations. This is further expressed in the following lines: ‘parroting our master's/ style and voice, we make his language ours/ converted cannibals/we learn with him to eat the flesh of Christ’ (Eidlin 44). Here the latter line refers to the symbolic Holy Communion in which bread is shared resembling the body of Christ, Walcott links this with the civilising of the Natives.
The poem naturally reflects the interplay of the natural order of things and what is forced upon the Natives from man: ‘sharing with every beach/a longing for those gulls that cloud the cays/with raw, mimetic cries/never surrenders wholly’ (Walcott). This last stanza uses the ‘gulls’ to resemble the Natives, indicating that their spirit will live on despite their forced prescription to their colonizers.
Works Cited
Eidlin, Barry. "Crossed Wires, Noisy Signals: Language, Identity, and Resistance in Caribbean Literature." 1st May 1996. Academia.edu. 2nd August 2016 <http://www.academia.edu/2986752/Crossed_Wires_Noisy_Signals_Language_Identity_and_Resistance_in_Caribbean_Literature>.
Walcott, Derek. "Crusoe's Journal ." - - (1965/1970). sek.nyme.hu. 2nd August 2016 <sek.nyme.hu/btk/flli/anglisztika/bedit/Dokumentumok/PoCo_Orientalism_texts.doc>.
