Omeros Characters

Girl TroubleWhen we first meet Achille, he is traveling down the rocky road of love, hitting just about every bump along the way. He's broke; his best friend stole his girl; and if he had a dog, so...

The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships?What do you think the most beautiful man or woman in the world looks like? It's hard to even imagine, isn't it? It's not that we're pessimists here at Shmoop...

Drama. King.Philoctete is one of the most interesting characters in this poem. He doesn't figure prominently in large chunks of the text, but he is conceptually complex—right down to his name. Li...

Dealing with DemonsMajor Plunkett has problems. Like Philoctete, he has a wound without purpose, one he didn't earn in his own name. He spends a great deal of time trying to understand what the ins...

The Bad Granddad of Western LitLet's face it: Walcott kind of has a thing for Omeros. We know from his own confession late in the book that he was once a devoted young student of Homer's works. But...

A Mystery Wrapped in a ConundrumWalcott knows that if you're going to go epic, you simply to have a "blind seer" among your cast of characters (think: Tiresias). He borrows the concept from Homer h...

Superwoman?On the surface, Ma Kilman is just your average, mild-mannered shopkeeper. Seven Seas and Philoctete hang out in her store, and she provides compassionate sanctuary for the characters who...

Displaced Angel in the HouseIt takes a long time for Walcott to let us in on this, but Maud Plunkett is kind of a betty—a really white, Victorian betty: All her county shone in her face when the...

Boo's Your DaddyWarwick appears briefly in Omeros but has a huge impact on the narrator and his thoughts about life and work. He first identifies himself as one "raised in this obscure Caribbean po...

The Importance of Being AfolabeIt's only natural that a poet would be obsessed with the meaning of words and utilize them to the full. We see Walcott do just this with his punning ("ances-tree") an...

Star-CrossedYoung Plunkett's timeline comes in right after the narrator's first encounter with the ghost of his father. It's probably not a coincidence that echoes from the past should be so neatly...

Misery Loves CompanyOur narrator meets Catherine Weldon in an unconventional way: across time, through the pages of a book. He's actively questing for characters while nursing a broken heart during...

A "fisherman-mechanic" by trade, Maljo grows weary of the political promises of the two major parties on the island. His idea to start a grassroots third-party campaign may be a little hare-brained...