Characters: Derek Walcott

Walcott integrates his own persona into Omeros, participating in the narrative on two main levels. He shares his fascination with Helen, engages in dialogue, and often interacts with groups of characters. Additionally, he openly discusses autobiographical elements and reveals the structural framework of Omeroswhile he is in the midst of writing it. Despite the apparent clarity of his motives, it would be a serious mistake to assume that the Walcott...

Characters: Major Dennis Plunkett

After World War II, retired British Major Dennis Plunkett and his wife Maud moved to St. Lucia. Dennis had suffered a head injury during the war, and Maud nursed him back to health. As Walcott points out early in the narrative, the Major's wound aligns with the recurring theme of suffering in the epic. At first, this white, landowning couple seems out of place among the predominantly black population of the island. However, their presence can be...

Characters: Achille

Achille, the central figure among the villagers of Gros Ilet in St. Lucia, is a fisherman deeply enamored with Helen, the local beauty. His affection for Helen creates a rivalry with his friend Hector, mirroring the legendary conflict of their Homeric namesakes from three millennia ago. Struggling with the disorientation that often accompanies colonialism, Achille must not only win Helen's heart but also uncover his personal and racial heritage...

Characters: Helen

From the outset, it is crucial to recognize Helen as an extraordinary woman because she is central to the epic's narrative on four distinct levels. First, she incites the conflict between Achille and Hector, mirroring the dispute between Paris and Menelaus in the Odyssey over Helen of Troy, which sparked the Trojan War. Second, Walcott, as a participating narrator, is driven to immortalize her in Omeros. Third, the character Dennis Plunkett...

Characters: Warwick Walcott

Derek Walcott's father, Warwick Walcott, significantly influenced his son's artistic ambitions. This is evident in Warwick's two pivotal appearances as a ghost in Omerosand in the recurring father-son relationships throughout the epic. Warwick first appears at the end of book one, urging Derek to focus on past and present events in his hometown. He warns against foreign distractions, using the local barber as an example, whose divided loyalties...

Characters: Omeros

The title character is an ageless blind man who has made St. Lucia his home after traversing the world's oceans. Omeros, akin to both the island's patron saint, St. Lucia, and the Greek poet Homer, possesses the gift of inner vision. He is a citizen of the world, not confined to any single place or era. Throughout most of the narrative, Omeros serves as a trusted advisor to the villagers of Gros Het, but Walcott portrays him through a series of...

Mirroring his classical counterpart, Philoctetes, Philoctete acts as a crucial mediator. He endeavors to persuade Achille and Hector that their shared connection to the sea makes them brothers, not adversaries. When emerging political factions in his newly independent nation threaten to sow division, he mourns the lack of collective love for St. Lucia. Additionally, he suffers from a severe shin wound that symbolically represents the struggles of his fellow countrymen. Philoctete exemplifies the resilience necessary to endure and prosper despite the legacy of slavery.

Similar to how Philoctetes in Greek mythology is ostracized due to his wound, Philoctete is too incapacitated to fully engage in village life for much of the poem. Just as the Greeks needed Philoctetes to defeat the Trojans in the Iliad , the villagers of Gros Ilet cannot begin to overcome their...

The real Catherine Weldon was a widow from New York whose dedication to the cause of Native Americans led her to the Indian territories in the Dakotas during the 1890s. Walcott's portrayal of her as a fictional character seems to be faithful to the historical and biographical records available. Weldon became the private secretary to Sitting Bull during the period when the Ghost Dance movement was spreading among the plains tribes, causing anxiety among white settlers and frontier military units. The Ghost Dance offered the Sioux a false hope that the disappearing buffalo herds and past generations of Native American warriors would return. They also believed that the magical shirts worn during the dance rituals would make them immune to bullets. White frontiersmen feared the unifying force of the movement and used the unrest it caused as a pretext for the Wounded Knee Creek massacre of 1890.

One of the most consistent criticisms of Omeros is its inclusion of non-Caribbean elements in what is supposed to be a West Indian epic. Critic Robert Bensen has noted that Walcott is more interested in the character of Catherine Weldon than in merely the historical time and place she occupies. Weldon is another of Walcott's composite characters, representing at different times Major Plunkett, Helen, Achille, and Walcott himself. Like Dennis Plunkett, she is an outsider trying to find her place in an adopted society. She is as symbolic and enigmatic as Helen, caught between two worlds. In a reflection of Achille witnessing the destruction of his African village, Weldon stands by helplessly as Omeros, in the guise of a Sioux shaman, laments the devastation of his village. Like Dennis Plunkett, Weldon provides a vulnerable human face to the oppressor's side of the imperial equation.

Dennis Plunkett's wife, Maud, yearns for the music and changing seasons of her beloved Ireland. Despite her desire to return, her husband refuses to allocate funds for the journey. Maud remains a constant, grounding presence, counterbalancing Dennis's often whimsical ambitions. Plunkett affectionately calls her his "crown" and "queen."

Though a secondary character, Maud's influence extends significantly. While Dennis immerses himself in preserving Helen's place in the fading empire's history, he feels remorse for emotionally neglecting his wife. Maud spends her solitary hours crafting a tapestry featuring all the archipelago's birds, complete with Latin labels, paralleling Penelope (Ulysses's wife, who wove by day and unraveled her work by night during her husband's absence). Helen's iconic yellow, low-backed dress is "borrowed" from Maud without consent. Maud's death triggers a series of communal connections. At her funeral, Walcott observes the "charity of soul, more piercing than Helen's beauty" in Achille's empathetic tears. Just outside the church, Helen tells Achille she is returning to him. In the following weeks, Major Plunkett seeks comfort from Ma Kilman and learns to work alongside his laborers without condescension.

In the dream that transports Achille back centuries to his African roots, Afolabe appears as his distant ancestor. Afolabe challenges Achille to reclaim his African name, believing that forgetting one's identity means lacking the substance to cast one's own shadow. Guided by Afolabe, Achille overcomes the amnesia caused by the Middle Passage and generations of slavery. He is astonished to discover that aspects of African tribal customs have survived in familiar St. Lucian rituals.

While Achille watches in despair, Afolabe and the majority of his village are seized by a group of marauding Africans who sell their captives to slave traders on the coast. The story of Afolabe in the third book provides context for an episode leading up to the Battle of the Saints, which was already narrated in the second book. In that earlier account, Afolabe and other slaves were preparing British defenses against a potential French invasion of St. Lucia. During this time, Admiral Rodney renamed Afolabe to Achilles. This episode gains additional significance, suggesting that Walcott intends for Afolabe to symbolize his own African heritage.

Ma Kilman embodies African animism, integrated into St. Lucia's Catholicism through generations of obeah-women (practitioners of sorcery and magic rooted in African traditions). Though she has forgotten the knowledge of herbs, potions, and spells, she reconnects with the homeopathic gifts of the earth when she sheds the trappings of civilization. She follows a trail of ants into the mountains to find the foul plant shaped like the anchor that caused Philoctete's incurable wound. From this plant, she prepares a steaming bath that purges all the poison from Philoctete, healing him completely. Her No Pain Cafe serves as the village's communal hub. A skeptical yet grieving Dennis Plunkett visits her there to contact his deceased wife. When he asks Ma Kilman if she sees his wife in heaven, she simply replies, "Yes. If heaven is a green place." Acknowledging his wife's love for Ireland, the Emerald Isle, Dennis is deeply moved: "That moment bound him for good to another race." Ma Kilman acts as an earth-mother figure, healing men and connecting them to the natural world.

Achille's friend turned adversary, Hector manages to bring Helen home with him early in Omeros, though he knows he hasn't won her affection. Hector's downfall stems from abandoning his maritime calling to become a taxi driver. His van, named the Comet, adorned with flames on the exterior and leopard-skin upholstery inside, represents the island's cultural ambiguity. The leopard pattern hints at a bygone Africa, while the fiery comet suggests an enticing future driven by tourism and corporate exploitation beyond local control. After leaving the sea, Hector is never at peace and finds no solace in Helen. In the sixth book, reckless driving sends him over a cliff to his demise. Despite Hector's betrayal in life, Achille mourns the loss of an irreplaceable friend. Hector appears in the inferno section of the seventh book, a soul in a self-chosen purgatory.

During Walcott's European tour, he stops in Dublin to pay tribute to James Joyce. Standing on the Liffey River embankment one evening, he imagines Joyce's Anna Livia (from Finnegans Wake) rushing by. He then envisions Joyce, known for his poor eyesight, as a "one-eyed Ulysses" gazing towards the sea after a departing ship.

Walcott's connection to Joyce dates back to his school days at St. Mary's College. In a 1965 autobiographical essay in London Magazine, Walcott recalls identifying with Joyce's character Stephen Dedalus during his youth. In a later interview with J. P. White (see Sources for Further Study), he discusses the epic nature of Joyce's Ulysses and its introspective, rather than heroically active, protagonist Leopold Bloom.

Alix Walcott, the elderly mother of Derek Walcott, appears only once in Omeros. However, Derek Walcott mentions that she is incorporated into his portrayal of Maud Plunkett. Derek visits her at the nursing home where she is cared for.

The domestic scene where Walcott visits Alix offers a break from the constantly shifting narrative. The poet must prompt his mother, who struggles to recall the names of her loved ones. She eventually remembers ''Derek, Roddy, and Pam,'' her children with Warwick. This moment reinforces Walcott's connection to the island before he must leave again to pursue his calling, which takes him away from his source of inspiration.

Admiral George Rodney, commander of the British fleet in Gros Ilet Bay during the eighteenth century, defeated the French fleet under Count de Grasse on April 12, 1782. The Battle of the Saints, named for the small Les Saintes islands, is renowned in naval history for Rodney's innovative "breaking of the line" tactic, which set a precedent for future naval battles and strengthened the British position in peace talks with France.

In Omeros, Admiral Rodney sends Midshipman Plunkett on a spying mission to the Dutch in book two. He is also responsible for renaming Achille's ancestor from Afolabe to Achilles.

Convinced that there is no substantial difference between the two major parties polarizing the island in their bid to win the general elections, this character, known as Maljo, forms his own alternative United Love party. Maljo runs an ineffective, American-style, grassroots campaign, driving through the streets and shouting through an unreliable megaphone about Greek and Trojan parties fighting over Helen. When Maljo is defeated, he leaves for Florida to work in the citrus harvests.

The waiter struggles to navigate through the beach crowd when both Walcott and the Plunketts notice Helen's initial appearance in Omeros. He is mockingly referred to as "Lawrence of St. Lucia," contrasting him with Lawrence of Arabia. Towards the epic's conclusion, Walcott mentions him again as a representation of the "wounded race" who laugh in confusion when an irritated Achille curses a group of intrusive tourists.

The Greek sculptress who teaches Walcott the correct pronunciation of Omeros (Homer's name) is given the pseudonym "Antigone." She briefly appears as Walcott's lover in her Boston studio in the first book. However, she quickly disappears because she has grown weary of America and wishes to return to her native islands. Despite her brief appearance, the encounter resonates throughout Omeros. The pronunciation of Omeros leads to Walcott's explanation of the Antillean patois for the name: O expands from the throat of utterance to "the conch-shell's invocation," extending to all other ovular openings in the poem; mer means "both mother and sea"; os evokes gray bone and the surf lacing the island's shore.

Walcott frequently references statuary, recalling this character's sculptures. Toward the end of the fifth book, he takes to the lonely streets of Boston, vainly attempting to relocate her dusty, marble-strewn studio. The statue of Omeros that emerges from the sea to guide him through his St. Lucian inferno in the seventh book is one of the last remnants of her influence.

Christine is Ma Kilman's niece, a country girl who begins working at the No Pain Cafe toward the end of Omeros. For her, Gros Ilet is an awe-inspiring city, and she is described as a new Helen.

Chrysostom is one of the fishermen who gather with Achille and others on the shore each morning before starting their work.

See Helen

See F. Didier

See Omeros

Pancreas is one of the fishermen who gather with Achille and others on the shore before starting their work each day.

See Helen

See Philoctete

Placide is one of the fishermen who gather with Achille and others on the shore before starting their work each day.

In Omeros, Midshipman Plunkett serves two main roles. In a historical flashback, he is assigned by Admiral Rodney to a covert mission to Dutch ports to gather intelligence on England's enemies. Tragically, he dies later by accidentally falling on his own sword after his ship is compromised in the Battle of the Saints. His more significant role is to remain a dormant figure for two centuries until his name is rediscovered, allowing him to become Major Dennis Plunkett's symbolic son. The Major uses the midshipman to imaginatively connect his heritage to his adopted St. Lucia. Despite the young man's death occurring long before Dennis's birth, it gives the Major a sense of pride in a namesake who died honorably defending the "Helen of the West Indies."

See Ma Kilman

See Omeros

See F. Didier

Theophile is among the fishermen who gather with Achille and others on the shore before starting their workday.