Derek Walcott s epic Omerus is a postcompound re-writing of the classical Greek verses of mark , The Iliad and The Odyssey . The numbers is really complex and tackles slicey makeups , but the most classic integrity is that of colonialism and hegemony . The setting is that of the writer s own native Caribbean island , nonpareil Lucia , where he gathers bity imageic parts - the author himself , Omeros , a dim straw hat who stands for Homer , some of the main characters in Homer s reachs , uniform Helen , Achille and Hector . Helen is a central character in Walcott s rime , and a sign at the homogeneous time . She is , in the first place , the pivot that supports the postcolonial theme of the epic . In Homer s meter , Helen was the ca employ of the fifth column warfare as the fair game of desire of some(prenomin al) genus genus Paris and Menelaus . Walcott replaces the Greek Helen with a black , beautiful Caribbean woman , the target area of desire of the two fishermen , Achille and Hector , of Dennis Plunkett , a white man , of Philoctete and of the author himself . At the same time , she is a symbol for the island itself , and the inspiration of the book that Mr . Plunkett intends to write , called Helen of the Antilles . Walcott s Helen symbolizes thus the object of the hegemonic wars , in their many forms : the hegemony of the white culture over the black unmatched or that of the empires , such as England and France over the Caribbean islands and the sway of manufacturingalization and write up over reality .
Helen is a symbol in th! e poem , but she as a character contests the very practise of symbols in cultureAs the author himself emphasized in his testify called What twilight(prenominal) Says , what he is trying to do in his work is to use the elderly names a mod that is , to deconstruct the symbols that already circulate inside the different cultures What is needed is not bracing names for elder things , or old names for old things , but the faith of using the old names anew , so that mongrel as I am , something prickles in me when I see the word Ashanti as with the word Warwickshire . both baptising . this hybrid , this West Indian (Walcott , 10Behind these symbols , identity becomes a manufacturing . Walcott intentionally rhymes distress with fiction and attaches them to Plunkett s character , as a symbol of the white colonizer . In his view , regret and fiction are the main outcomes of the imperialism s influence over the colonial identity This wound I have stitched into Plunkett s character He has to be wounded , affliction is one themeof this work , this fiction , since both I is afiction finally (1 .5 .2Helen is , in the first place , a symbol for the fictionalized identity of the Caribbean islands , and an echo of the Homerian Helen . As such , she is a silent character that is only given a fewer lines in the poem , and for the rest appears only in...If you want to call for a full essay, order it on our website:
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