Derek Walcott Uses Poetry to Explore Themes of Ethnicity Essay

I agree with the fact that Walcott uses poetry to explore themes of ethnicity, cultural chauvinism and political inequality. However, these bent the only themes we find in his poetry. He also makes use of themes such as life and goal and religion. Sea Canes is one of the numberss which includes the themes mentioned above.In Sea Canes the poet is put together observing a landscape in which he can see sea canes and animals, all of this in a miserable atmosphere Half of my friends are dead. 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 people as something supernatural and much nobler than the funding. As he looks to the other side of the sea canes he views a boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead. He metaphorically says that the owls represent us hu cosmoss leaving the world of the living to take part the mystical world of the dead.In The Hawk we can locate clear examples of ethnicity, cultural chauvinism and the clangor between western and Caribbean culture. Here he mentions the carnival in Trinidad, and says that the only ones that should attend it are the locals. ulterior in the poem, Walcott mentions the ethnicity and the races of the people at the carnival. The negroes, bastards, mestizos, proud of their Spanish blood, all the people with mixed filiation who are proud of their Spanish blood, not their native blood. Here Walcott is referring to the colonial powers and their endless control all 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 edentulate tigers, once powerful and strong but now nothing more than a big bare cat Caribs, like toothless tigers. Here we can appreciate cultural chauvinism, throughout Th e Hawk he criticizes colonialism by describing its consequences and shows an enormous nationalism for the Caribbean islands.Extract 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 tropical islands compared with Europe. He out of the blue makes a radical change and commences to talk about his dead friend Gregorias. He describes him very passionately and compares him with famous painters from the renaissance brown cherubs of Giotto and Masaccio, which makes us assume he was a first-class painter. He feels horrendous affection for him and his death, as he tells us, has dramatically changed Walcotts life.The Walk is another poem which describes Walcotts crucifixion due to the loss of friends. Here he ta lks about his first wife. He used to straits with her up the hills, until the day she fell ill You were weak and lame, So you never came. She then had other interests and ultimately 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 London 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 paragraph he talks about the British Empire, the empire that their solarise that would not set was going down the largest empire in history was now diminishing and weak. This poem is again about Walcotts cultural past and t he 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 influence of the British and the French had on the West Indies. Death appears a great deal too reminding us that his personal life also plays an important role in his poetry.