the other end of Walcott's heritage is his European lineage. This facet of Caribbean history is primarily explored through Major Plunkett and his discovery of Midshipman Plunkett: men from different centuries whose lives intersect over a span of two hundred years during a notable naval battle between England and France. Walcott's depiction of the Battle of the Saints does not focus on European triumph. Both Walcott and his character Dennis Plunkett are interested in this historic battle for more personal reasons. They perceive it as evidence of St. Lucia's inherent value, not as a European trophy, but for its significance to them as individuals.

Independence
For contemporary liberated citizens such as Philoctete, Hector, and Maljo, the ongoing struggle to claim Helen revolves around their social and political stewardship. Walcott observed the failed experiment of the West Indian Federation from 1956 until its dissolution in 1962. The Federation's collapse was a disappointment to Walcott, who saw it as a chance to unite and consolidate the resources of smaller islands into a more potent, cohesive entity. In the wake of the Federation's failure, St. Lucia gained independence as a state within the British Commonwealth on February 22, 1979. Although the Federation is not directly referenced in Omeros, the myopic and destructive political infighting that led to its downfall is represented in the epic's national election scene. It is tempting to interpret the acronyms of the two parties Maljo aims to oppose (LP and WWPP) as the Progressive Labour Party and the United Workers Party. This parallel is particularly intriguing since Walcott mentions a candidate named Compton, and the Honorable John Compton of the United Workers Party won the fiercely contested election of May 1982.

North and South
The influence of North America looms significantly over the Caribbean region and Walcott's professional life, making its way into his West Indian epic. Walcott, as a participant in the poem, asserts that as a West Indian, he considers himself a citizen of the Americas. Therefore, his time spent in the United States is as integral to his expansive landscape as Africa is. He condenses history to highlight the irony of a postcolonial United States that nearly eradicated one race and enslaved another. Instead of focusing on the genocidal policies that endangered the Crow and Sioux, Walcott zeroes in on the historical figure of Catherine Weldon. Weldon lost her son and faced ostracism from her own race to support the Native American cause. Walcott humanizes sympathetic members of the white oppressor class, such as Weldon and the Plunketts. He references numerous Western authors and artists in the Euro-American segment of his epic. However, he does not aim to downplay the profound evils of imperial domination and slavery. Rather, he seeks to confront the black and white dualities of his personal experience. The core theme of Omeros is reconciliation, redemption, and the empowerment of Creole West Indian consciousness.

Epic Features
While Omeros shares several characteristics with traditional epics, Walcott intentionally diverges from the genre to expand the scope of this classic heroic form. The lengthy poetic language, though not consistently elevated, is often more lyrical than purely narrative. There is no effort to maintain objectivity, and the protagonists range from the poet himself to humble peasants, starkly contrasting with demigods engaged in grand battles. Walcott frequently references and draws parallels with Homer, Virgil, Dante, and others, aiming to validate ordinary men and women whose mere survival takes on unexpectedly heroic dimensions.

Point of View
Since Walcott incorporates his own persona as one of the protagonists, his perspective is always present. In other contexts, this might compromise the individuality of other characters; however, Walcott employs a self-reflexive technique, openly asserting that each narrative "I" is fictional, including his own. This is crucial because one of his goals is to highlight that all accounts of events, whether in an epic poem or a "factual" history, are selective narratives. The controlling "I" decides what is central and what is pushed to the margins. Walcott is embedded in his characters, allowing him to comment on the roles they play within the narrative.

Setting
The primary action unfolds in postcolonial St. Lucia, North America, and several major European capitals. Historically, the West Indies have been profoundly shaped by the influx of various races and cultures; thus, the story often looks back in time to introduce past events that have impacted the present. In a vision, Achille is transported three hundred years into the past to rediscover forgotten African rituals and witness tribesmen being captured by their own people for the slave trade. Other episodes include the Battle of the Saints in 1782 and incidents from the 1890s on the American frontier. The narrative follows Walcott from St. Lucia to Boston, to Europe, and back to the Caribbean. Since all these events have psychological effects on various characters, much of the action is internal, as each resolves personal conflicts.

Allusions
From the outset, Omeros relies on the reader recognizing numerous allusions to classical literary epics. The title itself refers to Homer, and many characters’ names echo prominent figures from the Iliad and Odyssey. Additionally, as Major Plunkett conducts his historical research, he discovers parallels between the Trojan War and the Battle of the Saints. Beyond classical and historical references, Walcott also alludes to more contemporary authors, painters, and sculptors, examining how he and other artists translate their reality into art.

Imagery
Walcott employs a rich tapestry of sensory imagery throughout Omeros. The pronunciation of Omeros' name is echoed in the "O" sound of the conch shell being blown. The blind Omeros navigates his surroundings through sound. Walcott and his fisherman characters view the sea as a maternal figure, "mer" in their dialect, with her waves writing and erasing messages along the island's coast. Birds are abundant on Maud Plunkett's tapestry, and the seaswift becomes a central symbol for multiple characters, both literally and metaphorically. Philoctete's life is almost defined by his painful wound. Helen's beauty, her regal demeanor, and her distinctive yellow dress attract attention wherever she goes. Beyond these conventional sensory appeals, Walcott's text is self-reflective. He describes envisioning a Crow horseman as he writes in book four; then in book five, falling snow and the whiteness of the page itself merge with "the obliteration / of nouns fading into echoes, the alphabet / of scribbling branches."

Symbolism
The omnipresent sea not only surrounds Walcott's island, linking it to distant lands and providing sustenance for the fishermen, but it also symbolizes the historical amnesia affecting St. Lucia's native population. Generations of African descendants have lost touch with their heritage, much like each wave's mark on the shore is erased by the next. These ancestors are repeatedly depicted as laboring ants, working tirelessly under oppressive conditions. The seaswift's flight forms the sign of the cross in the sky and guides Achille's canoe on his African journey. Warwick Walcott's ghost mentions the swift's habitual flight pattern, to the sea and back, as the path his son must trace to return to St. Lucia. The wounds of each character symbolize the suffering brought by slavery, colonialism, and subjugation. Ma Kilman's homeopathic healing of Philoctete acts as a baptism into a new life, allowing him to remember the past without being victimized by it. The various journey motifs—whether in dreams to Africa or to Soufriere's Malebolge, the poet's travels to the United States and Europe, or connections to Greece, the Battle of the Saints, or the American Dakotas—all signify the different paths leading to wholeness for Walcott's characters.

Prosody
The fundamental poetic form of Omeros is predominantly off-rhymed terza rima stanzas. The rhyme scheme often interlocks, as is customary in terza rima, but Walcott varies from exact rhyme to several types of off-rhyme. Occasionally, he includes couplets and tetrameter passages. Walcott described his meter as "roughly hexametrical," with an emphasis on "roughly." The number of loose iambic feet varies so much that the stanzas often resemble free verse.

1600s-1820: By 1820, the African slave trade via the Middle Passage had brought around 6,777,000 slaves to Brazil and the West Indies. Concurrently, roughly 964,000 Caucasians immigrated to the region, resulting in an ethnic imbalance with an 88% African descent majority. In North America, 550,000 Africans were imported into a Caucasian population of 651,000 by 1820, making African Americans a 46% minority. In the third book of Omeros, Walcott has Achille trace back three centuries to reaffirm his African heritage.

1833-1865: In 1833, the British Parliament abolished slavery in its West Indian colonies. President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in the United States in 1863, and the Thirteenth Amendment ensured freedom at the Civil War's conclusion in 1865.

Late twentieth century: St. Lucia's population of approximately 151,000 is predominantly of African descent (90.3%), with smaller groups of racially mixed individuals (5.5%), East Indians (3.2%), and Caucasians (.8%). In contrast, the United States, with 22 million people, has a more diverse ethnic makeup: Native American (.8%), Asian-Pacific (2.9%), Hispanic (9%), African-American (12%), and non-Hispanic Caucasian (71.3%). Books four and five of Omeros detail Walcott's reaction to racially divided Boston.

1776-1814: The English colonies in North America fought for independence in 1776, coinciding with intense conflicts between France and Great Britain over contested territories in the Americas. In Omeros, the Battle of the Saints is a focal point of Major Plunkett's historical research. France eventually ceded St. Lucia to England in the 1814 Treaty of Paris.

1941-1979: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States joined the British Commonwealth and its allies against the Axis powers in World War II. In Omeros, Major Plunkett often recalls his involvement in Montgomery's North African campaign during the war. The Plunketts retired to St. Lucia post-war, becoming part of the postwar independence movement. This period includes the short-lived West Indian Federation (1958-1967) and St. Lucia's independence on February 22, 1979.

Late twentieth century: The United States operates with a tricameral government and an elected president as the chief executive. St. Lucia, though loyal to the British monarch represented by a governor-general, is governed by an elected parliament led by the prime minister. In the second book of Omeros, Walcott recounts an election campaign between the St. Lucia Labour Party and the United Workers Party.

1780-1870: Historically, St. Lucia's economy has relied heavily on agriculture. By 1780, there were nearly fifty sugar plantations, a labor-intensive crop that spurred the rapid influx of slave labor in the West Indies.

1870-1930: In the late 1800s, natural coal deposits in St. Lucia became a significant income source. This industry is highlighted by the ghost of Warwick Walcott in the first book of Omeros as he notes the female colliers loading steamers in Castries Harbor. By the 1940s, coal production income declined due to the shift from steam to petroleum-fueled shipping. In 1923, bananas were introduced to the local economy, eventually surpassing sugar as the primary agricultural income source.

Late twentieth century: Although agriculture continues to be the main source of St. Lucia's international revenue, there are ongoing initiatives to diversify crops (with bananas accounting for 67% of production) and to promote tourism and industry into the 1990s. Tourism stands as the second largest sector of the economy, generating millions of dollars annually. As Walcott points out in Omeros, there are significant concerns about the commercialization of land, handicrafts, and local traditions for the amusement of foreign tourists.

Excerpts from Walcott's Omeros, The Odyssey, and Collected Poems are narrated by the author on a Caedmon audiotape. This recording, made on November 18, 1993, was copyrighted in 1994 and is available from HarperCollins Publishers.

Walcott also reads passages from Omeros and discusses the epic in a 1991 interview with Rebekah Presson. This interview was released under the title "Derek Walcott" as part of the New Letters on the Air: Contemporary Writers on Radio series and is available from the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Sources for Further Study
Bakken, Christopher. Review in The Georgia Review, Vol. 45, No. 2, Summer 1991, pp. 403-06.
Highlights that although Walcott often narrates rather than illustrates, his epic about people typically left out of history "demands a revision of our world view."

Benfey, Christopher. "Coming Home," The New Republic, Vol. 203, October, 1990, pp. 36-9.
Concludes that Omeros is highly ambitious but lacks the "surefootedness and verve" seen in Walcott's finest poetry.

Bensen, Robert. "Catherine Weldon in Omeros and 'The Ghost Dance'," Verse, Vol. 22, No. 2, Summer 1994, pp. 119-25.
Provides an in-depth analysis of the character Weldon's role in Walcott's Omeros.

Brown, Robert, and Cheryl Johnson. "An Interview with Derek Walcott," The Cream City Review, Vol. 14, No. 2, Winter, 1990, pp. 209-23.
Walcott shares insights on the creation of Omeros and draws parallels between the ancient Greeks and modern West Indians.

Bruckner, D. J. R. "A Poem in Homage to an Unwanted Man," New York Times, October 9, 1990, pp. 13, 17.
In an interview with Bruckner, Walcott talks about the inspirations for Omeros and his hesitations about labeling the poem an epic.

Burnett, Paula. "The Ulyssean Crusoe and the Quest for Redemption in J. M. Coetzee's Foe and Derek Walcott's Omeros," in Robinson Crusoe: Myth and Metamorphoses, edited by Lieve Spaas and Brian Stimpson, St. Martin's Press, 1996, pp. 239-55.
Compares and contrasts the two works, focusing on Helen's unifying role in Omeros and how Walcott portrays women as figures of healing and redemption.

Hamner, Robert D. Derek Walcott. Rev. ed. Twayne, 1993.
Analyzes Walcott's career up to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1992.

Ismond, Patricia. "Walcott's Omeros: A Complex, Ambitious Work," Caribbean Contact, Vol. 18, No. 5, March-April, 1991, pp. 10-11.
Provides an overview and analysis of the work and its influences.

Lernout, Geert. "Derek Walcott's Omeros - The Isle Full of Voices," Kunapipi, Vol. 14, 1992, pp. 90-104.
Interprets Omeros as a "counter-narrative" that critiques rather than imitates Western traditions.

Lucas, John. "The Sea, The Sea," New Statesman and Society, Vol. 3, October 5, 1990, p. 36.
Praises the linguistic richness of Omeros.

Mason, David. Review of Omeros in The Hudson Review, Vol. 44, No. 3, Autumn 1991, pp. 513-15.
Argues that Walcott's inclusion of extraneous material outside the central Caribbean setting weakens the narrative.

McClure, Charlotte S. "Helen of the 'West Indies': History or Poetry of a Caribbean Realm," Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. 26, No. 2, Fall, 1993, pp. 7-20.
Views the character of Helen as a novel interpretation of her Greek counterpart due to the Caribbean context in which Walcott places her.

O'Brien, Sean. "In Terms of the Ocean," Times Literary Supplement, Vol. 4563, September 14-22, 1990, pp. 977-78.
Reviews the narrative, claiming it fails to maintain reader interest in the North American and European sections.

Ramazan, Jahan. "The Wound of History: Walcott's Omeros and the Postcolonial Poetics of Affliction," PMLA, Vol. 112, No. 3, May, 1997, pp. 405-18.
Explores Omeros as a rejection of postcolonial literature as a "literature of victimization" through the imagery of wounds and affliction in the work.

Terada, Rei. "Omeros," in her book Derek Walcott's Poetry: American Mimicry, published by Northeastern University Press in 1992, pages 183-227.
This work explores how Walcott employs the Homeric literary model.

White, J. P. "An Interview with Derek Walcott" in Green Mountains Review, New Series, Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring-Summer 1990, pages 14-37.
Walcott talks about the challenges of moving from a mindset of enslavement to true freedom. After discussing the epic qualities of Moby Dick, Ulysses, and the poetry of Walt Whitman, he expresses his aim to depict, in Omeros, "the names of things and people in their own context."