Derek Walcott's poem "Castaway" depicts the despair of a sole castaway stranded on a small, unfriendly island. As the man searches desperately for signs of rescue to no avail, his hope fades and madness creeps in. Biblical references to God and Jesus as castaways mirror the man's own hopeless situation. The poem emphasizes how companionship is necessary for survival through vivid descriptions of the man's deteriorating mental state in stark isolation.
Derek Walcott's poem "Castaway" depicts the despair of a sole castaway stranded on a small, unfriendly island. As the man searches desperately for signs of rescue to no avail, his hope fades and madness creeps in. Biblical references to God and Jesus as castaways mirror the man's own hopeless situation. The poem emphasizes how companionship is necessary for survival through vivid descriptions of the man's deteriorating mental state in stark isolation.
Derek Walcott's poem "Castaway" depicts the despair of a sole castaway stranded on a small, unfriendly island. As the man searches desperately for signs of rescue to no avail, his hope fades and madness creeps in. Biblical references to God and Jesus as castaways mirror the man's own hopeless situation. The poem emphasizes how companionship is necessary for survival through vivid descriptions of the man's deteriorating mental state in stark isolation.
The starved eye devours the seascape for the morsel
Of a sail. The horizon threads it infinitely.
Action breeds frenzy. I lie,
Sailing the ribbed shadow of a palm, Afraid lest my own footprints multiply.
Blowing sand, thin as smoke,
Bored, shifts its dunes. The surf tires of its castles like a child.
The salt green vine with yellow trumpet-flower,
A net, inches across nothing. Nothing: the rage with which the sandfly's head is filled.
Pleasures of an old man:
Morning: contemplative evacuation, considering The dried leaf, nature's plan.
In the sun, the dog's feces
Crusts, whitens like coral. We end in earth, from earth began. In our own entrails, genesis.
If I listen I can hear the polyp build,
The silence thwanged by two waves of the sea. Cracking a sea-louse, I make thunder split.
Godlike, annihilating godhead, art
And self, I abandon Dead metaphors: the almond's leaf-like heart,
The ripe brain rotting like a yellow nut
Hatching Its babel of sea-lice, sandfly, and maggot,
That green wine bottle's gospel choked with sand,
Labelled, a wrecked ship, Clenched sea-wood nailed and white as a man's hand.
Themes: Hope, Despair, Lost identity, Diaspora
Castaway is an astonishingly unusual and gripping poem. An old man is a sole castaway on a small and unfriendly island. His only hope is for rescue, but this hope seems bleak. Castaway can be defined in three ways. Firstly, castaway can refer to something that has been thrown away or rejected. Secondly, it refers to being ashore as a survivor of a shipwreck. Lastly, it means being left without friends or resources. In the beginning we sense the distress of the person as he searches desperately for signs of human life and the hope of being saved, which is clear by the use of the metaphor “the starved eye devours”. This shows how hungrily and anxiously his eyes moved around the island and across the sea to find salvation. The person continues by saying “the horizon threads it infinitely,” it refers to the sea and the horizon is where the sky meets the sea. The word infinitely highlights to the reader that nothing could be seen in the distance and that the person would never be rescued. The third stanza depicts a sense of hallucination and hysteria in the person. The term “footprints multiply” suggests that he is not alone on the island or that he forgets that he is alone. The fourth and fifth stanzas continue to describe what the person sees and is experiencing on the island. He sees the sand as smoke, pictures the waves building and breaking down castles, sees the seaweed being pulled back and forth by the movement of the waves and describe the ever present “nothing” as rage. This imagery of death pervades. Stanza eight emphasizes the idea of silence in the poem and mirrors stanza five where the poet describes a pervasive nothingness. The person is listening carefully; he hears every wave break when it hits the shore and in that moment he is responsible for something that shatters the silence, “I make thunder split.” Biblical references: The person refers to biblical imagery for he is now “Godlike, annihilating godhead, art and self…” He is God, but he dismisses this idea, dismisses art and forgoes himself. He abandons all that gives hope and purpose. To the person now, there is no spiritual solace to find. This acts as a foreshadowing of the notion that the person will not be saved. The use of the word “babel” proves to be another biblical reference, where God caused the people to speak different languages and thus they could not understand each other. The remaining two stanzas of the poem give the imagery of death and a sense of despair for not only the person but the reader. The idea of “the ripe brain rotting” could refer to the creative mind of the person that is wasting away because of its lack of use and the fact he has no one to appreciate his work. The last line of the poem is having the imagery of Christ being crucified on the cross and thus presents the idea of Jesus as a castaway similar to the person. All these techniques employed by Walcott in the poem emphasize the unpleasant nature of being castaway and shows that companionship is necessary to daily life. Walcott's loyalty to both his English and his African backgrounds provides the major tension of his work. His written language is split between literary English in the poems and island patois in the plays, though in later efforts the two styles have tended to merge into one that uses more natural speech and rhythm patterns, and a more direct, open mode of expression. Walcott believes that his mixed heritage has enabled him to put personal experiences into universal contexts. Because of this, he is both at home and displaced wherever he goes.