i
- The village has been changed forever by the greater encroachment of the tourism industry.
- Walcott describes it as having become a "souvenir itself," a quaint reminder of what had been life on the island.
- The gaze of the tourist—and his camera—is on every facet of their lives. These outsiders seem to just love the poverty. Ugh.
- They see that the island is called the Helen of the West Indies, but they fail to believe it because the place now looks like everywhere else.
- They are using up the island, but not really seeing or experiencing it.
ii
- The narrator asks the big questions in this section: Did the entire history (and mythology) of St. Lucia and Greece really happen just for Helen of the Plastic Sandals?
- Is she the real Helen praised for beauty beyond imagining? Did Hector and Achille simply renew the age-old fight over her?
- Now the narrator begins to poke holes in his own extended metaphor, telling us that these analogues don't have to be so exact (or, you know, analogous).
- The Helens are two different women—despite some similarities—and this isn't Troy.
- He develops the idea of original and adaptation by talking about Maud's birds. They may have an origin, but they are migratory, too, so they move around the world and adapt, becoming native to many places.
- And the French and English? What were they fighting for? Was it Helen (the woman)? Was it the island and its indigenous inhabitants?
iii
- We see the children of the island in school learning history that doesn't include the ancestors of Philoctete and Achille.
- Instead they're fed a neat little parcel of Admirals' names in a schoolbook.
- When the children pass Seven Seas, Philoctete, and Ma Kilman, they call out in American accents. Have they, too, been colonized by "progress"? Not the children, Shmoopers…