Omeros Chapter VI Summary

i

  • Helen talks with some women about her work as a waitress. She says that the white manager didn't like her because she wouldn't let the men feel her up, and describes her dramatic exit from that job. You go, girl.
  • The women tell her that they don't know of any restaurant work for her. Bummer.
  • Helen reveals to the women that she's pregnant, but that she doesn't know who the father is.

ii

  • More conflation of "white Helen" and "black Helen." Okay…
  • Helen strolls down the beach singing the Beatles' "Yesterday."

iii

  • As Helen walks down the beach, she encounters a boy riding a horse through smoke and the scene switches to the Trojan horse and the burning of Troy.
  • The narrator riffs on Helen's singing of "Yesterday" to point out other moments in the ancient conflict and then to equate them with the current happenings on St. Lucia.
  • He then tells us that he encountered Helen another time, when she set up shop as a kind of hair stylist on the beach, braiding white people's hair into corn-rows.
  • He equates Helen with a pantheress—think: bored, angry, and stalking away from him.