Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain as a Postcolonial Play

The question of identity has plagued the characters in the postcolonial world. The colonial context inevitably gives birth to the notion of identity. The confrontation between the coloniser and the colonised ends up damaging the cultural and material heritage of the colonised. It also destroys the mental equilibrium of the colonized. The assertion of power is not always coercive and violent but at times interpellative too. As a result of different techniques of domination, the native finds himself enmeshed in an existential crisis and suffers from an identity complex. It has been the task of postcolonial writers to reveal the effect of various forms of domination. However, writers like Derek Walcott, Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka not only explore the various facets of this crisis but also endeavour to infuse the dominated people with courage so that they can overcome this colonial hangover.

Constructing identity is an uphill task in the Caribbean world. Bill Ashcroft and others have written in The Empire Writes Back:

        In the Caribbean, the European imperial enterprise ensured that the worst features of colonialism throughout the globe would all be combined in the region. (1989:144)

Within a span of 25-30 years after Columbus’s arrival the aboriginal population comprising Caribs and Arawaks was all but exterminated. Their legacy was zeroed in by the Spanish colonizers. With the introduction of sugar trade, a demand was created for a large number of labourers. As a corollary, black people from Africa were imported to be used as labourers. Even the situation did not improve after the abolition of slavery in the 1800s. New forms of domination sprouted in the name of indentured labourers who were imported from India and China. This variegated forms of domination annihilated the true culture of the Caribbean and made it a place virtually sans history.

Dream on Monkey Mountain is a representative play by Walcott that projects the emasculated psyche of the black Caribbeans living in a world where identity, in Lacanian term, is an ever- elusive signified. This play unfurls before our eyes various ramifications that arise from long history of colonial domination. In his "Note on Production," Walcott says that 'The play is a dream, one that exists as much in the given minds of its principal characters as in that of its writer, and as such, it is illogical, derivative, contradictory. Its source is metaphor and it is best treated as a physical poem with all the subconscious and deliberate borrowings of poetry’ (1970:208). This intermingling of dream and reality helps Walcott delineate the colonial psychosis and the way to get over this psychosis. In his epic poem Omeros Walcott has given the Homeric epic a postcolonial twist to establish an identity for the oppressed people. This journey motif is also dominant in Dream on Monkey Mountain.

A cursory glance at the storyline of the play reveals that the plot is simple enough to comprehend. Makak, a charcoal burner, is arrested on a charge of vandalism and put to prison. In his dream he sees the apparition of a white woman who tells him that he is the king of Africa. Towards the end of the play he realizes that he cannot form an identity of his own until he kills the white apparition. As soon as he kills the apparition of a white woman Makak wakes up and realizes that he has called up his real name.

Under the apparent simple plot line are entwined a number of complex key themes related to the issue of identity in a postcolonial world. The opening scene of the play shows the crisis of identity as a result of colonial subjugation. When Corporal Lestrade enquired Makak of his race, he replies, ‘I am tired’. This reply is suggestive enough of his fractured identity which is a corollary of long subjugation. Makak wants to bypass the question of race as he wants to take shelter in the realm of oblivion that can only offer him some solace amidst the ossified existence. Colonialism not only plunders wealth but also robs the colonized of his true self. It is therefore an emasculating enterprise too. Colonialism has uprooted Makak from any sense of belonging and creates in him an inferiority complex. He is assigned the name of an animal (‘Makak’ stands for monkey) and is downgraded in the rank of the Great Chain of Being. Fanon in his opening chapter (‘Concerning Violence’) of The Wretched of the Earth speaks about this dehumanising aspect of colonialism:

  In fact, the terms the settler uses when he mentions the native are zoological terms. He speaks of the yellow man’s reptilian motions, of the stink of the native quarter, of breeding swarms, of foulness, of spawn, of gesticulations. (1967: 32-33)

What is most noteworthy is that Makak has internalised his subordinate position and as a result, tries to hide his identity. Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphors We Live By have shown us that life is not what we construct but it is shaped by manifold societal constructive norms. And in this construction metaphors play a pivotal part. In Dream on Monkey Mountain the metaphor of blackness has constructed a world for Makak where to be a black signifies to be devoid of identity.

           Walcott shows in detail how colonialism has fractured the identity of Makak. He loathes his own image. He tells Lestrade that he has not seen self-image in the mirror for thirty years. Moreover, he also refuses to see his reflected image in water:

Not a pool of cold water, when I must drunk,

        I stir my hands first, to break up my image. (1970:226)

Makak sees his own image from the perspective of a white coloniser. Patrick Colm Hogan rightly observes:

       He is, in effect, a metaphor for those legacies of colonized subjects who, in Walcott’s words, ‘looked at life with black skins and blue eyes’ (“What the Twilight Says” 9), suffering the ‘contradiction of being white in mind and black in body. (12)’ (1994:108)

The Manichean compartmentalisation of the world into the black and the white reduces the colonized to an extent that he becomes enamoured of whiteness. A classic example of this aspect is the case of Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Under the prevalent hegemonic ethos, Pecola pines for blue eyes like those of white children because she has internalised the rhetoric of colonial master that makes her adulate whiteness. In Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Condition Nhamo refuses to come back at home during his vacation from the mission as he has taken up the white value as an apotheosis of culture and now loathes his native existence. In Dream on Monkey Mountain Makak also longs for whiteness. This aspect of psychosis is clearly hinted by the epigraph of the play which is culled from Sartre’s Preface to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth:

 Thus in certain psychoses the hallucinated person, tired of always being insulted by his demon, one fine day starts hearing the voice of an angel who pays him compliments; but jeers don’t stop for all that; only, from then on, they alternate with congratulations. This is a defence, but it is also the end of the story. The self is dissociated, and the patient heads for madness. (1970:211)

When Makak is arrested in prison, he is said to have carried a white mask; a literal symbol of his desire for the west. His quest for identity is supported by the apparition of a white woman who acts as a kind of muse figure to Makak. Makak feels elated by her message, ‘She say that I come from the family of lions and kings’ (236). Corporal rightly diagnoses the malady as ‘rage for whiteness that does drive niggers mad’ (228). However, it must be noted that Lestrade also suffers from this kind of complex. He is a mimic man for whom salvation lies in imitating the white world. It is proved by his remark to Souris:

        I am an instrument of the law, Souris. I got the white man work to do. (1970:279)

His desire is representative of the departure syndrome that bedevils the Caribbean society. In this way both Makak and Lestrade are the two sides of the same coin. Both try to escape from an overwhelming feeling of non-entity in different ways.

Walcott not only describes the psychological emasculation of the colonized but also affirms the dignity and identity of the colonized through decolonisation of the mind. By dint of various dream sequences the playwright shows the way for the redemption of the black Caribbeans. The vision Makak sees helps him shake off his Eurocentric vision that invaded his inner space. The visionary experiences help him regain his true identity unencumbered by the dictation of the West. Makak undergoes a complete journey in his dream. He finds his true abode in Africa where he becomes the king of his tribe and passes judgement on others. In his dream he embraces an alternative world where he finds a ground beneath his feet. The make-believe world of dream proves more substantial than the real world. In scene one of the first part Walcott shows Makak healing the sick people with his magical power in a dream. This is the first tentative step he takes towards achieving the emancipation from colonial bondage. He is accurate in diagnosing the psychological disease of the first peasant when he says, “Remember, is you all self that is your enemy” (1970:249).

In the opening scene of part two we find Makak, in the course of his dream, stabbing Corporal Lestrade and then running into the forest along with Tigre and Souris. Tigre and Souris join Makak only for personal profit. They want to steal the money from Makak and are not concerned with his vision. Here Walcott pokes fun at the dishonest national leaders who only think of hoarding wealth under the façade of mass regeneration. In the forest episode we find an alternative kingdom by the blacks where conventional Eurocentric norms hardly get validity. Corporal Lestrade also undergoes a parallel journey to reclaim his identity. His encounter with Basil, a black apparition the concept of which is culled from Haitian mythology helps him regain lost identity. This confrontation scene reminds us of Simon’s hallucinated encounter with Beelzebub in Golding’s Lord of the flies that brought epiphany to him. In Dream on Monkey Mountain Lestrade imbibed the mimetism of the white denying his own identity. The following conversation between Lestrade and Basil is instrumental in bringing out the hollowness of this slavish imitation:

Corporal: My mind, my mind. What’s happened to my mind?

Basil: It was never yours, Lestrade.                 (1970:297)

This encounter helps Lestrade get back his lost self and like Milton’s Samson, he begins to feel rousing motion within himself. Elated by his new found identity he makes an address to Africa of the mind that becomes indicative of his recovery of self:

I kiss your foot, O Monkey Mountain…I return to this earth, my mother. Naked, trying very hard not to weep in the dust. I was what I am, but now I am myself…Now I feel better. (1970:299)

In scene three of the second part (Apotheosis scene) we see an application of anti-colonial views. Walcott presents in detail various cultural practices of the tribal community. Protesting against the racist vilification thrusted upon the black people, Walcott celebrates precolonial ethos. However, it must be remembered that the precolonial ethos is not described in idealistic terms but along with its pros and cons. Walcott describes the setting thus:

Bronze tropies are lowered. Masks of barbarous gods appear to a clamour of drums, sticks,the chant of a tribal triumph. A procession of warriors, chiefs and the wives of Makak in splendid tribal costumes gather, chanting to drums. (1970:308)

We find Shakespeare, a representative figure of European cultural sobriety deployed by the political masters for political reasons, tried and hanged for having committed injustice to humanity. This scene culminates in the beheading of the white goddess whose image obsessed Makak in such a way that he forgot his real name and lineage. That is why Corporal remarks accurately:

She is the wife of the devil, the white witch. She is the mirror of the moon that this ape look into and find himself unbearable. She is all that is pure, all that he cannot reach. (1970:319)

It is only after beheading the apparition of the white woman that Makak is finally restored to the status of man. Makak calls up his original name which is Felix Hobain. We are reminded of the case of Bertha in Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea when she realizes that her real name is not Bertha but Antoinette Cosway:

     Names matter, like when he wouldn’t call me Antoinette, and I was Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes and her looking glass. (1977:147)

It is true that Walcott is advocating, like Fanon, violence to uproot the colonial regime and unify the oppressed people. Fanon in his The Wretched of the Earth tells unequivocally:

   At the level of individuals, violence is a cleansing force. It frees the native from his superiority complex and from his despair and inaction; it makes him fearless and restores his self-respect. (1967:74)

To conclude, we can say that Walcott in his Dream on Monkey Mountain tries to hold up an alternative world for the black Caribbeans; a world free from the influence of the colonisers. It is true that at the end of the play Makak is harked back to the real world where nothing is found to have changed. But it does not suggest the futility or fatuousness of his vision. Like Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale this play gives us a glimpse of the fact that the other world is possible. Edward Baugh aptly remarks that, ‘The dream is purgatorial, bringing him to self-acceptance and psychic wholeness .(2006:85)’It is only as a result of that visionary dream that Makak is able to regain his lost identity that elevates him from the derogatory status of an animal to a man.

Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill, et al. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Print.

Baugh, Edward. Derek Walcott. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New Delhi: Penguin, 1967. Print.

Hogan, Patrick Colm. “Mimeticism, Reactionary Nativism, and the Possibility of Postcolonial Identity in Derek Walcott's ‘Dream on Monkey Mountain’.” Research in African Literatures Vol. 25, No. 2 (summer, 1994): Jstor. Web. 26 November 2013.

Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Print.

Walcott, Derek. Dream on Monkey Mountain. Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. New York: Noonday P, 1970. Print.

_____."What the Twilight Says: An Overture." Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays. New York: Noonday P, 1970. Print.

DOVER BEACH AS A VICTORIAN POEM or NOTE OF SADNESS IN DOVER BEACH

The  age in which Arnold was born was a crisis ridden period in English history.The growth of materialism and scientific inventions ,social and political theorising by J.S.Mill and Spenser ,Darwin’s Origin of Specis and the rapid spread of Marxism thoroughly jerked and shook the minds and beliefs of the commonly rational Victorian public.This internal conflict was reflected in the poetry of the Victorians ,who were utterly obfuscated and exasperated by two different ideals – one wholly traditional ,the other extremely modern ,intending to severe all traditional norms and values so as to usher in the advancing civilisation.

                 Many writers of this period showed their disgust towards the growth of materialism and loss of traditions ,through their works.Matthw Arnold was one of the leaders in this respect.His poetry,especially Dover Beach ,signifies this spirit of scepticism ,bemoaning the sudden retreat of traditional faiths and values of morality.

       The poem sets off with a beautiful description of a night- a night bright with moon light falling on everything ,the calm sea ,the sweetly scented air and the tranquil bay .The serenity of the surrounding is only broken by the wave lashing against the shore,sucking pebbles and then again retreating .This provides an appropriate setting for the reflection of human life.The continuous breaking of waves and their withdrawal from the sea shore bring in the eternal note of sadness –

“At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.”

             In the second stanza ,Arnold refers to the great Greek tragedian Sophocles .He had also heard the waves in the Aegean sea and this had brought into his mind the ebb and flow tide of human misery .The poet,in the third stanza,thinks of the sea of faith which once encicled the earth and humanity like a halo .As long as there was faith ,there was peace and solace.But now all that is lost.The world is now devoid of spiritual consolation .In the midst of the retreat of the sea ,the poet discerns the retreat of religious faith .In the final stanza Arnold urges his beloved to be true to one another always because that is the only and one consolation.Drawing an analogy between the pelopponesian war and the present situation he writes-

“And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.”

     Dover beach in many ways reveals the mind and inner self of the poet and becomes a period piece.

Symbolism in Synge's Riders to the Sea.

J.M.Synge's Riders to the Sea is fraught with numerous symbols elevating the domestic tragedy to the position of a universal tale of suffering.Most of the symbols used in the play are archetypal in keeping with the classical spirit of the play .The most powerful symbol is that of Sea, the giver and taker of life.The islanders depend on it for their sustenance but it also snatches the live that it gives.Synge makes use of the popular belief that the flood tide induces birth while the ebb tide causes death,reminding us of shakespeare's treatment in Henry V.Like Shelley 's West wind,it is at once destroyer and preserver of life.The sea symbolizes the tragic destiny of the aran islanders.The sea is a supernatural entity over which even the Almighty God of the christians has no control.That is evident from Maurya' s rejection of the'young ' priest 

   Another archetypal symbol is the Riders.The menfolk of the island are all riders who ,in order to keep the family wheel a going, ride on the sea.Like Santiago,they venture into the sea only to be defeated reminding us of eternal human predicament.

    There are several symbols associated with life and death.They exist side by side.Mention may be made of the red mare of Bartley and grey pony of Michael .While red stands for viriliy, grey symbolizes death .Bartley also sets out his fearful journey in the shirt that his dead brother left at home.,

     The use of number nine is another important symbol  derived from mythology.It is a triple trinity and therefore a perfect number.There is no news of Michael for nine days and Maurya weeps for her lost son for nine days.

       Maurya's turing of the empty cup mouth downwards is another significant symbol suggesting a failure of christian solace and showing the pagan theme of suffering and renunciation. Thus, the symbols employed here bring out the tragic scheme of the play 

Treatment of love and time or interplay of love and time in Shakespeare's sonnets

The sonnets written during the Elizabethan period were based on the impact of time,love,beauty and mutability on the lives of human beings. Being a poet of this time Shakespeare uses all these themes in his 154 sonnets ,but he uses them in his own way. They unlock the fathomless soul of the genius. However, they are not overtly autobiographical for Shakespeare adds a ray of fancy to render them in an objective way that elicits our praise. Time appears as an arch-enemy in the world of Shakespearean sonnets which tries to siphon off the cream of life and hurl men to nothingness. In them we find a poetic tug-of-war with the onslaughts of Time.
Dympna Callaghan remarks,  "Shakespeare’s treatment of time in the sonnets essentially rehearses fundamentally Ovidian themes, namely the progress of mutability, loss, grief, and death that constitute the central themes of Ovid’s great mythic work, the Metamorphoses. In Ovid, metamorphosis is the mythic equivalent of the movement, the shifts and changes that occur over the course of time, to bring about decay, death, and, ultimately, the disintegration of form that is the fate of all organic matter. The changes Ovid describes invariably involve a diminished rather than enhanced human identity – healthy and attractive young people are regularlyturned into plants and animals, far less glorious renditions of their
former selves."
Shakespearen sonnets are an attempt to immortalize love in a mortal world which is constantly threatened by the ravages of time.In sonnet no 18 ,shakespear is frank in his admission about how time wrecks different natural elements .The "darling buds of may" are shaken ,where as "summer's lease hath all too short a date."The gold complexion of the sun even dims.The power of this time is also estabilshed on the other sonnet Let me not to the marriage of true minds.Here ,again the poet shows how time kills rosy lips and cheeks.In fact,there is no effort by the poet to deny the grim fact that time desoys all things.The ravages caused by the time is also felt by the poet in his personal life.He perceives how time has played on him and anticipates aptly in the sonnet That time of year the decay that will nring to him ere long.
Yet,Shakespeare's sonnets are not only useless mourning over that which cannot be averted.He is quite assured that love is not time"s fool.In Sonnet no73,the poet refers to the restorative power of love amidst the destructive forces of time.He hopes to immortalise his love, -"So long as men can breathe ,or eyes can see.So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.'

BHARATTIRTHA [THE INDIAN PILGRIMAGE]: a thematic analysis

“As the mission of the rose lies in the unfoldment of the petals which implies distinctness,so the rose of humanity is perfect only when the diverse races and nations have evolved their perfect disinct characteristics but all attached to the stem of humanities by the bond of love.” In search of spiritual commonwealth:Tagore.
In the poem Bharattirtha ,Tagore envisioned an India imbued with the noblest of her ideals:that of tolerance,acceptance,exchange.The poem depics the soul of both Indian philosophy,culture, tradition ,The poem is the string of garland around which the flowers of poesy is imitated and established successfully.
The poet hails motherland as the land of great births .According to him, the land is so pious and honourable to be worshipped whole heartedly.India is the land which welcomes every individual human race,tribe with same warmth of heart.Tagore’s words echo the same as saint Tulsidas viewed that the Indian culture is the garland of various flowers of distinctive cultures.It is a unique quality of mother India that she never closed her door over any one, enduring immense pain. -”Nobody will go empty handed from the sea shore .”
Tgore calls for universal brotherhood and spiritual awakening from bondage,tyranny .Until and unless the soul is awakened ,it cannot resist attacks on its culture.We know that tagore was a believer in an interactive,dialogic world ,given to a deep sense of sympathy,generosity and mutuality , and in which nations wouldnot be parochial ,xenophobiac and cemtripetal but poised towards a morally ,spiritually enlightened community of nations through the espousal of centrifugal outlook,multilateral imagination ,principle of universality.This belief is got embodied in the beautiful lyric Bharattirtha.

CHARACTER OF CLYTEMNESTRA IN AGAMEMNON

Of the characters of Aeschylus which has been wrought with the greatest care , and which leave the most profound impression on the memory,is clytemnestra.It is to the delineation of this character that our dramatist has devoted maximum care.
she is an accused wife,pitiless and contemptuous,but resolutely bent on revenge.The virile masculinity of purpose gets a reference when the watchman says, "victory!Great news for clytemnestra ,in whose woman's heart/A man's will nurses hope."
Clytemnestra possesses a power of intellect which reigns throughout her speeches-she prepares an elaborate welcome for Agamenon.Her next insistence most famously known as the carpet scene ,displays an excessive zeal in giving Agamemnon a welcome that is unexpected.In an instance of irony she adds after her instructions to the slaves to spread the silk tapestries beneath his feet-"Justice herself;/shall lead him a home he never hoped to see."
She has often been compared to Lady Macbeth.But the comparison is too far fetched.Lady Macbeth provoked a lot but did the task of an accomplice while clytemnesta executes the act herself.
In a masterly fashion ,Aeschylus has drawn the portrait of clytemnestra.She is not merely a bad woman who has an adulterous intrigue ,she is an outraged mother.

"Silence! The court is in session "as a drama of protest: a critical overview

Vijat Tendulkar, ”the angry young man of Marathi theatre”, protests against the various problems of his contemporary society.He once said-“As a social being,I am against all exploitations,and I personally believe that all exploitations must end”. His plays, such as “sakharam binder”,”kamala”,etc, are all violent attacks on the society with its cockroach –ridden customs and prejudices.In Silence! The Court is in Session, Tendulkar has depicted the plight of a young woman, who is betrayed by the male dominated society. A traditional male dominated society cannot relinquish its paralyzed values and customs. The society does not like to perceive or receive any social change. Tendulkar presents a treatment of those ugly ways of society in this play. It is a bitter satire against the social ills and an interesting attempt to criticize the follies that prevail in our society.Here,multiple themes are woven in the texture of the drama.
Benare,,a lively sportive woman,is subjected to different atrocities.From the outset, Benare is presented as a happy, communicative woman. She cultivates the acquaintance with samant as soon as she arrives at the village for the show. As a school teacher she is very punctual.she takes part in a play concerning the trial of president Johnson. But as they have plenty of time berore the drama, they decide to stage a mock trial.Benare is singled out as a culprit who is to be tried.she is charged with infanticide and unmarried motherhood. Benare gets dumb at the change of situation.Witnesses after witnesses heap charges against her, as they would peel the layer of an onion. The accusations against her are based on conjectures and hearsay,but they strike home.The accuser and the accused become one.The judge verdicts that the child in Benare’s womb should be destroyed.They spare Damle who exploits the gullibility of Benare and her body.
Tendulkar also hammered the contemporary judicial system.A judicial court is supposed to be a seat of Justice, seriousness and decorum. Through this play, Tendulkar also makes a review of the present day court procedures, and points out the problem of degradation and the loss of the dignity of the court. It is a matter of fact that a witness has to take an oath keeping his hand on the Gita or some such religious scripture, during the court procedures.In the play, the witnesses take oath touching the Oxford English Dictionary. What is more, Mr. Kasikar, the judge, also jumps into the witness box in violation of all court procedures and decorum, and declares his personal views from the witness stand: "A sinful canker on the body of society- that's my honest opinion of these grown-up unmarried girls."5 It reminds us the words of Lord Bryce,-“If the lamp of justice goes out in the darkness, then how deep is that Darkness.”
Tendulkar has criticized the middle-class morality that throttles the tender desires of Benare, a middle class woman, to mother a child in the play. Tendulkar seems to leave the play without suggesting any solution to the problem. None in the play is ready to sympathize with Benare. Only Mr. Kashikar, the judge, feels that they are going too far in their mock-trial but, then, he immediately silences his conscience. After all the Court is in session, and everyone is expected to keep silence! Tendulkar covertly pleads for sympathy for the victims of the society through this flash of humanity for a moment in the heart of Mr. Kashikar.