Plunket-try

Derek Walcott in Omeros only cites from one history book written by the Englishman, Harry H. Breen. Breen’s book, St. Lucia: Historical, Statistical and Descriptive published in 1844 presents a euro-centric depiction of Walcott’s home (Dick 106). In fact, one of Omeros’ main characters, Major Dennis Plunkett, recites from this book (and forces his wife to memorize a certain passage). Rhona Dick argues an implicit and explicit connection between Plunkett and Breen in that they both argue St. Lucia’s importance as a Caribbean Gibraltar, write with “blunt and unsurprising racial prejudice about the black inhabitants of the island,” the history that both men record is not especially detailed, and from his descriptions of the local landscape Breen implies that he admires St. Lucia where he was a resident, like Plunkett, for a number of years.[1]

Plunkett is indeed a flawed historian (as we can assume that Breen is as well), one who corrects the errors he finds in a pamphlet picked up from a local museum, who argues with an iguana over the naming of the island (the original name of St. Lucia was Iounalo, an Aruac name), and one who rejects the “type” of history written by “black pamphleteers” as “Folk-malarkey” (Walcott 91-92).[2] However, Walcott also portrays Plunkett as an empathetic white colonial, he is not simply a washed up soldier writing the history of an island that he “conquered,” but also a widower, a fellow “farmer,” and a man searching for an identity in “history” not unlike Walcott himself. Plunkett escapes “typing” because he is portrayed by Walcott as surprisingly empathetic.

One example of the poet’s multi-dimensional portrayal of Plunkett is shown in the overt tenderness that Plunkett displays when Maud, his wife, dies. “The Major stood, then staggered/ to clutch the linen, burying his face inside her./ He rubbed their names against her stomach. “Maud, Maud,/ it’s Dennis, love, Maud. Then he stretched beside her… (Walcott 261).[3] This tenderness allows the reader to feel pity, the nascent beginnings of empathy for Major Plunkett.

Another example is when “Walcott” meets Plunkett after Maud’s funeral service. Walcott noticed, “his khaki shirt/carrying a black armband, and I saw that he was one of the farmers, transplanted to the rich dirt of their valleys, a ginger-lily from the moss/ of Troumasse River, a white, red-knuckled heron/ in the reeds, who never wanted the privilege/ that peasants from habit, paid to his complexion” (Walcott 268).[4] Walcott’s own observation of Plunkett is very charitable. He implies that Plunkett is innocent of pride and although their interaction after this observation betrays some of Plunkett’s pride and Walcott’s frustration with it, Walcott is admittedly kind to this character who could easily be portrayed as a type.

As Dick mentions, Walcott even compares Plunkett to his own father (Dick 111).[5] Following the comparison to Walcott’s father, he also makes a connection from Plunkett to himself when he says, “That khaki Ulysses/ there was a changing shadow of Telemachus/in me, in his absent war, and an empire’s guilt/ stitched in the one pattern of Maud’s fabulous quilt” (Walcott 263).[6] The poet, here, implies guilt on the part of Maud and Plunkett (by association with all things “empire”) but does not explicitly say that Plunkett is aware of his “guilty” role in the affairs of the island. And yet, later, there is an acknowledgement (a somewhat enlightened one) of his own guilt in the ongoing history of St. Lucia.

For example, Plunkett enjoys taking a “shawled” Maud to five o’clock Mass (255).[7] Usually the road they drive is peaceful, filled with sleepy-eyed manual laborers waiting for their ride. “Until, one morning, screeching round the cold asphalt,/twin lights had challenged him with incredible speed,/blinding him, until they veered and their driver called:/ ‘Move your ass, honky!”(255).[8]

When Plunkett gets out of the car to get “that sonofabitch!” Maud remains inside the Rover, shaking. Plunkett demeaningly insists that the driver give him the key to the transport. He asks the driver if he was drunk and yelled that they were nearly killed. “And furthermore, I resent the expletive you used. I am not a honky./ A donkey perhaps, a jackass, but I haven’t spent/damned near twenty years on this godforsaken rock/ to be cursed like a tourist” (256).[9] Hector says in response, “Pardon, Major,/I didn’t know that was you…” (256).[10]

After finally recognizing Hector, Plunkett softens, asks about Helen, shakes his hand again, and finally warns Hector about his new responsibility (that of driving a transport instead of a canoe). And when Plunket gets back in the Rover, he says to Maud, “My fault.”

In a literal sense, Plunkett fired Helen, who was taken in by Hector, and for whom (presumably) Hector quits the ocean and begins driving a transport to earn more money. But, there is a more figurative meaning to Plunkett’s admitting that this incident was his fault. Hector’s removal from the sea to acquire more money follows a western paradigm forced upon a non-western country. The empire that defines Major Plunkett is also the one that demeans and changes those around him, and the fact that he is (even marginally) aware of this makes Walcott’s portrayal of Major Plunkett as a flawed but responsible character appealing and humane.

Plunkett is a prejudiced historian, one who is blind to some of the consequences of his actions. But, he is also a man who is not blind to every consequence and one who takes responsibility for those things that he views as his fault. Plunkett is one who, even in anger, can joke about himself, a man who acknowledges fault without excuse or explanation.

In conclusion, I agree with Rhona Dick that Walcott is questining the supremacy of written and western history in Omeros, that he is likening poetry to history because both are manipulated creations of a humanmind, and that he is using Plunkett to typify some of the flaws of "objective" history. But, Walcott also allows Plunkett to apologize for his own involvement in Colonial rule, he uses him, an "other," to reflect what is human in all of us (grief, identity search, pride, guilt), and he effectively portrays him as a fully fleshed person, not a one dimensional "type."

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[1] Dick, Rhona. “Remembering Breen’s Encomium: ‘Classic Style’, History and Tradition in Derek Walcott’s Omeros.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 35 (2000), 105-115.

[2] Walcott, Derek. Omeros. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1990.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Dick, Rhona. “Remembering Breen’s Encomium: ‘Classic Style’, History and Tradition in Derek Walcott’s Omeros.”

[6] Walcott, Omeros

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.