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Article 2 Iffat Sayeed V LJan 2014
Article 2 Iffat Sayeed V LJan 2014
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Sirs, I does catch fits. I fall in a frenzy every full night. I does
be possessed. And after that , sir, I am not responsible. I responsible only
to God who spoke to me in the form of a woman on Monkey Mountain.
(226)
As per stage directions, the white apparition appears and
withdraws at this point making itself visible only to Makak. Makak falls
in frenzy and lies prostrate for the two felons and the corporal to jibe at
him. The play collapses into a dream sequence. A long subliminal reach
into the events of the past is journeyed through the two parts of the play
to reach the epilogue to the play.
The epilogue brings back in view the prison cell with Souris,
Tigre and Makak in conversation with each other. The Corporal is now
much softened in his cross examination. It is at this point that he looks at
the mask that he recovers from Makak and asks: Now, what is this?
(Holds up the mask) Everybody around here have one. Why you must
keep it, cut it , talk to it? (323) a little later, Lestrade releases Makak.
Go on. Go home. There, Monkey Mountain. Walk through the quiet
village. I will explain everything to Alcindor. Sometimes there is so
much of pressure . . . Go on. You are free. It is your first offence (323).
The questions that are raised by the transformation of Lestrade
from an offensive small time authority, who hurls abuses at the entire
black race, Animals, beasts savages, cannibals, niggers (216) to a
person who acquits Makak honourably and in the process attains self
knowledge are explored effectively with the help of the study of the
mask as an extended metaphor that address the themes of ambivalence,
racism and violence embedded in the play. Lestade is a mullato by origin
and his initial silence at the first sight of the mask is broken in the second
part of the dream sequence of the play when he stresses upon Makak to
let go of the hold that the white woman, in the form of an apparition has
over him and rid himself of the white and black mask that symbolises a
metaphorical enslavement.
The sight of the hollow mould of the white and black mask with
black sissal hair concentrated at the peripheral edges precipitates a
change in Lestrade. His stance is reversed. He reads his own misplaced
loyalties in Makak's obsession with the white apparition.
What you beheld, my Prince was but an image of your longing.
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chain can be referred to the fetters of servitude. let the chain break is a
declaration that foreshadows the later developments in the play when
Makak will actually take control and move out of the literal and
metaphorical chain of slavery. Literal, because he breaks out of the
prison, metaphorical because he decides to move on and leave the mask
behind. When the Corporal holds the mask in the epilogue to ask him:
you want this? (324) Makak shakes his head and moves on, for the
first time without the mask on him.
The play concludes with the rehabilitation of Makak as Felix
Hobian who is no more captive to the white goddess. His mind is not
paralysed anymore and the play ends on a note of jubilation Now, O
God, now I am free (P. 320).
Similarly, the Corporal who can both accuse and defend
Makak affiliates with his people as he confesses to the market inspector:
And if you know how much I would like to do for these
people, my people, you will understand even better. I
would like to see them challenge the Law, to show me
they are alive (261).
This paper has thus explored the non linear development of the
play. The fluid dream like structure of the play corresponds to the growth
and evolution of Makak and Lestrade as the two gradually let go of the
obsession with white culture that had chained them. The various stages
of the evolution of the two protagonists of the play are studied with
reference to the mask as an extended metaphor that brings into relief the
thematic concerns of the play.
Work Cited
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Primary Sources
Walcott, Derek. Dreamon Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. London:
Jonathon Cape, 1972.
- - -, What the Twilight Says. New Yok: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1998.
- - -, Mid Summer in Collected Poems. New York: Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, 1986.
Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. W.W. Norton & Company,
1994.
Secondary Sources
Balme B. Christopher. Decolonizing the Stage. New York: Oxford
University press, 1999. Print
Bhabha, Homi K. Of Mimicry and Men: The Ambivalence of colonial
Discourse, NY: Routledge, 1984.Print
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. London: MacGibbon and Kee,
1952. Print
Graves Robert. A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth The White
Goddess. Faber and Faber, 1999. Print
Jonsons Ben. Plays and Masques. W.W. Norton & Company, 2001. Print
Karnard, Girish. The Fire and The Rain. New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1998. Print
Mincha, Trinh. T. The Undone Interval in The Postcolonial Question.
Chambers, L and Curti, L (eds.) New York: Routledge, 1998.
print
Samad. R Daizel. Cultural Imperatives in Dream on Monkey
Mountain: Postcolonial Literatures. Parker M and Starkey, R
(eds.), London: MacMillan Press Ltd, 1995. Print
Savory, Elaine. Registering Connections: Masking and Gender Issues in
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