Complexities of the Caribbean identity through Derek Walcott’s “The Schooner Flight”.

Derek Walcott’s poetry provides a glimpse into the aspects of contemporary Caribbean identities. Reading “The Schooner Flight” can more easily understand contemporary dilemmas and endeavours in Caribbean identity-formation and the historical context of colonialism on the socio-economic, political, and cultural inequalities. “Walcott’s work can, therefore, serve as ethnographic documents of the challenges and tensions of postcolonial societies, calling into question the place of colonial history and language in the contemporary culture and identity” (Douillet, 2010:1). In this paper, we will see how socio-economic factors influence the representation of the poem’s protagonist Shabine, Walcott’s alter-ego, as a Caribbean identity and how the poem offers itself as a founding myth of Caribbean identity. It must be noted that there are rejections to literature being the representation of its canon, and, to an extent, this is true. However, I agree with Torquato Tasso, who maintains that “Poetry … is an imitation of human action, fashioned to teach us how to live” (Young, 2011:128). This paper is divided into three sections. The first section provides a summary of “The Schooner Flight” and will identify how some dualities of the Creole identity fuse into one body, Shabine. The second section will address how these dualities are introduced and represented through linguistic variances and dialects, themes of displacement and longing. Through this, Walcott mirrors a society’s attitude toward Shabine, who, as mentioned, is Walcott’s alter ego. Lastly, the third section will illustrate how Caribbean history’s socio-economic and political factors contributed to shaping these multiplicities.

“The Schooner Flight” appears in Walcott’s 1979 collection, The Star-Apple Kingdom. The poem’s beginning is a scene of departure with Shabine, departing from his sleeping mistress Maria Conception and his island of Trinidad to “ship as a seaman on the schooner Flight”. The poem follows the sea-fared journey of the schooner throughout the Caribbean. On this journey, Shabine documents his experiences and emotions through writing poetry in a journal. We find that Shabine’s reasons for departing are due to the island’s conditions, his family life and Shabine himself.

Returning to the first stanza of the poem, as the taxi departs, taking Shabine to the ship await, the poem reads:

‘This time, Shabine, like you really gone!’

I ain’t answer the ass, I simply pile in

the back seat and watch the sky burn

above Laventille pink as the gown

in which the woman I left was sleeping,

and I look in the rearview and see a man

exactly like me, and the man was weeping

for the houses, the streets, that whole fucking island. (354)

These lines set the tone of the poem. Constant dualities exist between two or more emotions, physicality, and language. In the above quote, physical and emotional dualities are departure and longing. The “love for the physical beauty, for the familiar streets and houses; the domestic attachment to home and woman and yet the movement away, and the tears of frustration and betrayal caused by this wrenching.” (McWatt, 1988:1608). The irony of love and tears of departure and longing, expressing at the same time vulnerability yet boldness in using delicate yet coarse language. Here the duality shows how Shabines reality is filtered and conveyed via the linguistic shape of Walcott. This will be discussed at length later in this essay. An embodiment of a familiar feeling toward Creole identity and a particular relationship between the writer and his home island, it is difficult not to hear Derek Walcott’s voice in every stitched line. The constant parallels show the realities of one duality of Creole identity, a double-sidedness, whether it be of their mixed heritage or history. Walcott uses his poetry to “negotiate between local history as such and a local history- of the Caribbean or the Mediterranean-claiming universal shape, meaning, and importance” (Fuller, 1995:323).

Shabine, “in his famous formulation … is at once ‘any red nigger’, a ‘nobody’, and an Aeneas who contains his country’s future.” (Fuller, 1995:323). The name Shabine is “patois for any red nigger”. A patois would usually get denied and disputed by those who are ‘placed’ in that category. Mixed descent means, typically in most societies throughout history and geography, that there, ironically, is an omniscient feeling of not belonging. The self is isolated, separated from the outside world and has to forge links with that world (McWatt, 1988:1611) and has some to no place in a society where black pride follows white power. Having to choose a side, that side would typically be black or white. Alternatively, you, a shabine, should go and make your voice heard. But then, you are not even heard by your ‘own’ people because they do not stand in unity in the first place — separation and failure of the community. Like Shabine, mixed heritage contributes to this Sisyphean quest, searching for oneself, self-discovery, they say. We do not see it, unlike Shabine, yet.

“Walcott’s work is deeply aware of the fissure of history” and is “soaked in a history that stands outside of the colonial centre” (McCallum, 2009:26–27). The seascape and landscape through which Shabine and the schooner Flight travel are dusted with a past of violence across multiple racial and national lines, and the obtrusion of that history into Shabine’s consciousness form an abundance of dialogue. Within this dialogue, the multiplicity of Caribbean identities is introduced and portrayed through linguistic variances, dialects and the crux of Walcott’s work, themes of displacement and longing.

Corruption, ambiguous and fragmented identity, colonialist history and themes of displacement and longing, among many, pave the way for specific psychological effects. Effects on language, state of mind, cohabitation and the dignity of societies and the individual. Language, its presence, and function are unmissable in this poem. Language is an integral part of the make-up of any Walcott poem, part of his matrix, one could say. Language paints a picture of conceptions and representation of identity, not only specific to the Caribbean but other global-south identities which also crisscross various heritages. Derek Walcott’s “oeuvre reflects his own lived experiences and understanding of the region while echoing a story heard across the archipelago” (McCallum, 2009:24) and further. Furthermore, through his oeuvre(s), one finds an immerged lexicon with descriptions and imagery which are coarse and unconventional. Clinking, like a shaken piece of stone in an empty tin. Foreign and, in some instances, unpleasant. However, on the other hand, this clinking integrated into Walcott’s work becomes part of a well-orchestrated piece of narration. Here, I would like us to focus on the use of profane and obscure language in “The Schooner Flight”. For example, in the first stanza, when Shabine substitutes the smirking taxi driver for a synecdoche, “ass”. Then the profane acerbity jumps in the adjectival “fucking”, a word used to help describe the whole island he is leaving and weeping for. Through Shabine’s gloom and use of obscurities, one can say that this underlines the island’s cursed fate.

One could say that Walcott is inclined to use malediction when writing about colonial history and its effects on the present. However, this is not the case. “Paula Burnett has suggested that Walcott “is generally not interested in using language to curse,” asserting that Walcott is not inclined towards malediction when critiquing colonial history in the Caribbean” (Lagapa, 2008:105). Instead, picture an orchestra symphony with the clinking piece of stone. It makes for a symphony, if used wisely, and in “The Schooner Flight”. So, through this integration of malediction into the poem, the writer explores how obscure language counteracts the conventionality of polished poetic expression. This also shows how Walcott stitches filaments of the Caribbean identities in his work through linguistic variances. “Recognition of Walcott’s use of swearing and curse words to parody the epic tradition, moreover, elucidates his understanding of the complexities of Caribbean history” (Ibid., 107).

“This time, Shabine, like you really gone!” The beginning of the poem holds a scene of departure and flight — severing ties with his family and the island. Here, I will focus on how the voyage and imagery of, not physically, looking back comments on the notion of displacement and nostalgia we see in Shabine, a vessel of representation.

The two contradicting images of leaving yet yearning shows the choice that Shabine reluctantly wants to flee. Later in the poem, we see that he was leaving his family, and his domestic situation became futile because of his affair with Maria Conception. With the corruption that began to take hold on his island, Shabine felt the need to separate himself from the wicked. “I … watch as the sky burns above Laventille pink as the gown in which the woman I left was sleeping … If loving these islands must be my load, out of corruption my soul takes wings … they had started to poison my soul”. Departing from the island, it seems, is Shabine’s only way to ‘self-discovery’. The socio-economic condition of the islands has begun to poison his soul. “Sense of Shabine shaking the dust from off his feet, the just man separating himself from the unrighteous” (Fuller, 1995:324). However, later in the poem, Shabine mentions his “smuggled Scotch for O’Hara, big government man”. As much as Shabine wants to escape the clutches of corruption, he is still, somehow, within and part of it. This quest for righteousness we see at the end is, however, unfulfilled. How does one form a unilateral vision and articulate coherence in your self-discovery out of fragmented histories?

The socio-economic and political history of the Caribbean has been a central aspect of the work of Walcott. The Caribbean colonial history has become an interior concept in which its people constantly search for discovery, whether for something else or themselves, at an exterior level. The residue colonial history has imprinted on the Caribbean mind is that societies are constantly asking for or searching for their culture. In the poem, Shabine asks, “Where is my rest place, Jesus? Where is my harbour? … the window I can look from that frames my life?”. These questions seek answers, again, in the exterior. However, here I believe Walcott is suggesting the present and the future. There are few harbours in one city. For instance, it is something that would be miles apart. In South Africa, significant harbours such as Cape Town are 1636.8 kilometres from the other in Durban. The two cities are different on sociological grounds.

Take the American Dream, for example. America has remained a place where a man can be whomever he wants to be. In detail, this ‘dream’ we have come to know is just imagination but conceptually still holds for many. Why does it still hold this truth? For many, whose socio-economic and political history includes ‘colonialism” and has been the ‘colonised’ the reality in the contemporary is futile. The land that is now ‘free’ are held up in clutches by those with power, and through this, the colonised dream becomes inviolable to the exterior. In the end, you are in conflict with yourself, not the government, a mistress or a mocker. The conflict lies at the innermost interior, yourself.

Language, images of dualities, emotions, actions, and psychological state of mind, all fused into one body Shabine, encapsulates the complexities of the Caribbean identity. The Caribbean, being so vast, proves the difficulty individuals endure in trying to formulate an identity out of a fragmented colonial history. Throughout Derek Walcott’s oeuvre, the reoccurring images of the fusion of the two histories fundamentally make the Caribbean. The Caribbean acts as a rubric for all who have mixed heritage to begin to understand. It is important to note that everyone understands what ‘understand’ means, but not everybody can comprehend this understanding. Hence the relevance of such poems today. The exterior holds even more uncertainty than what lies in your interior. That is because not everyone understands their interior. Not willing to comprehend it, I would say. McCallum puts it as, “The vision of self Walcott puts forth does not shy away from confronting entrails of history and is built of fragments, yes. But it coheres …” (2009:29). “The Schooner Flight” a revival of Caribbean identity and history. This paper shows that Walcott’s work is more a learning ode than a retelling elegy of history as such. Encountering this poem and other works by Walcott, I have started to recall my knowledge of being mixed-heritage. I am beginning to understand that answer lies within the interior and not precisely the exterior, as I once thought. Even though this paper has exclusively focused its lens on the complexities of Caribbean identity formation, it would be of interest for more research to be done on mirroring this argument to the Cape Town mixed-heritage society. Derek Walcott’s oeuvre is centred around the Caribbean. However, I have found myself within the same realm of consciousness as Shabine. As a mixed heritage individual, I found myself a flight the schooner once fared by Shabine.

REFERENCE LIST:

Douillet, C M. 2010. The Quest for Caribbean Identities: Postcolonial Conflicts and Cross-Cultural Fertilization in Derek Walcott’s Poetry. Radicalism in Quebec and the Americas. 7(1): 1–12.

Fuller, M C. 1995/96. Myths of Identity in Derek Walcott’s “The Schooner Flight”. Connotations. 5(2–3): 322–338.

Lagapa, J. 2008. Swearing At-Not By-History: Obscenity, “Picong” and Irony in Derek Walcott’s Poetry. College Literature. 35(2):104–125.

McCallum, S. 2009. “Either I’m Nobody or I’m a Nation”: Derek Walcott’s Poetry. The Antioch Review. 67(1). 22–29.

McWatt, M A. 1988. Derek Walcott: An Island Poet and His Sea. Third World Quarterly. 10(4):1607–1615.

Poetry Foundation. n.d. “The Schooner Flight” by Derek Walcott. Available: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48316/the-schooner-flight

Young, J. 2011. Representation in Literature. Literature & Aesthetics. 9:127–143.