Subject: English Literature

Class: M.A
Year/Semester: IV
Name of the Paper: XIII - African and Caribbean Literature
Topic: Derek Walcott
Sub-topic: ‘A Far Cry from Africa’
Key-words: Split identity, anxiety, isolation, cruelty, violence, religion and love
Name: Dr. Nisha Singh
Department of English and Other Foreign Languages
Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapith
Varanasi – 02
E: mail: dr.nishasinghmgkvp@gmail.com

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Name: Dr. Nisha Singh
 Sir Derek Alton Walcott
• Sir Derek Alton Walcott, (23 January 1930 – 17 March 2017) was a Saint Lucian poet and playwright.
• He received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature
• He was the University of Alberta's first distinguished scholar in residence, where he taught
undergraduate and graduate writing courses.
• He also served as Professor of Poetry at the University of Essex from 2010 to 2013.
• His works include the Homeric epic poem Omeros (1990), which many critics view "as Walcott's major
achievement.“
• In addition to winning the Nobel Prize, Walcott received many literary awards
• Obie Award in 1971 for his play Dream on Monkey Mountain, a
• MacArthur Foundation "genius" award,
• Royal Society of Literature Award,
• Queen's Medal for Poetry,
Derek Walcott: ‘A FAr Cry From AFriCA’

• The poem A Far Cry from Africa belongs to

post-colonial poetry.
• Principally the poem talks about the occasions
of the Mau uprising in Kenya in the mid-1950s.
• It was a grisly fight amid the 1950 between the
European pilgrims and the local Kikuyu clans
in Kenya.
• Kikuyu was the biggest and most instructed
clan in Kenya.
• The Kenyan clans opposed the English who
stole the country of them.
Derek Walcott: ‘A FAr Cry From AFriCA’
• A wind is ruffling the tawny pelt
Of Africa. Kikuyu, quick as flies,
Batten upon the bloodstreams of
the veldt.
Corpses are scattered through a
paradise.
Only the worm, colonel of
carrion, cries:
"Waste no compassion on these
separate dead!"
Statistics justify and scholars
seize
The salients of colonial policy.
What is that to the white child
hacked in bed?
To savages, expendable as Jews?
Threshed out by beaters, the long rushes
break
In a white dust of ibises whose cries
Have wheeled since civilization's dawn
From the parched river or beast-teeming
plain.
The violence of beast on beast is read
As natural law, but upright man
Seeks his divinity by inflicting pain.
Delirious as these worried beasts, his
wars
Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum,
While he calls courage still that native
dread
Of the white peace contracted by the
dead.
• Again brutish necessity wipes
its hands
Upon the napkin of a dirty
cause, again
A waste of our compassion, as
with Spain,
The gorilla wrestles with the
superman.
I who am poisoned with the
blood of both,
Where shall I turn, divided to
the vein?
• I who have cursed
The drunken officer of
British rule, how choose
Between this Africa and the
English tongue I love?
Betray them both, or give
back what they give?
How can I face such
slaughter and be cool?
How can I turn from Africa
and live?
• Theme • Walcott belongs to both African and
European roots and he identifies himself
as a mongrel; both grandmothers were
• Split identity, African and both grandfathers were
European.
• anxiety, • Walcott’s hybrid heritage prevents him
• isolation, from identifying directly with one culture
and creates a sense of anxiety and
• cruelty, isolation.
• violence, religion and • The wind “ruffling the tawny pelt of
• love are the major themes of Africa” refers to the cruelty of Mau Mau
the poem. insurrection against the violence of
British colonialism.
• The words “corpses, paradise, dead, Jews
and cursed” create an atmosphere of
religion in the poem.
• Walcott’s feeling of affection for Africa
and fondness for English tongue
propagate the theme of love.
A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA :
• There is no set regular rhyme
scheme in this poem, but slant
rhymes.
• The dominant meter is iambic
pentameter.
• The title of the poem involves an
idiom: “a far cry” means an
impossible thing.
LITERARY ANALYSIS
• Walcott uses religious symbolism all
through the lyric in his investigation of
African life.
• Walcott is investigating the connection
amongst life and demise,
grotesqueness and excellence.
• Walcott is investigating the
dumbfounding connection between
death in a “corpses” and life in
“paradise” after death.
• “A Far Cry from Africa” uses metaphors, such as
“colonel of carrion” ,
“corpses are scattered through a paradise”,
• To describe the death and destruction and inhumanity that has
occurred in both Africa and Europe.
• The poem exposes the circumstances of the writer,
as he has a place with the two societies how he feels
mediocrity in regards to the circumstance.

• The blended legacy of the poet makes him unfit to

choose to which he ought to be incomplete.

• The title itself too demonstrates the perspective

clash of the writer, a cry from an incredible
separation away and besides it demonstrates the
distance and the mediocrity of the artist.

• The ballad closes with a picture of viciousness and

remorselessness and with hunting down personality.
LITERARY DEVICES USED IN A FAR CRY FROM AFRICA
• (i) Cacophony: Kikuyu quick
• (ii) Alliteration: “Batten upon the bloodstreams”, “colonel of carrion cries”.
• (iii) Rhyme Scheme: Scattered rhyme ABABBC…., forced rhyme “again
…. Spain”
• (iv) Rhyming Couplet: “dead ….dead”
• (v) Anaphora: “How can I ….. How can I”
• (vi) Metaphor: Africa is compared to a lion and worm is a metaphor for
British colonizer.
• (vii) Illusions: Jews (Holocaust), napkin of a dirty cause (British
mannerisms), Spain (Spanish Civil war 1930)
• (viii) Play on Words: Colonel (colonial), Brutish (British or Brutus)
References:
1. poets.org/poem/far-cry-Africa
2. owlcation.com/humanities

Questions:
1. Is a far cry from Africa autobiographical?
2. Derek Walcott expresses the confusion which has overwhelmed him due to his identification
with both identities presented here. Discuss