How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #4
[…] he learned to chew/in the ritual of the kola nut, drain gourds of palm-wine,/to listen to the moan of the tribe's triumphal sorrow/in a white-eyed storyteller to a balaphon's whine,/who perished in what battle, who was swift with the arrow,/who mated with a crocodile (XXVI.i.139)
Achille's time with his ancestors restores to him an important ritual that had been lost: passing on cultural history through storytelling. Oral traditions are critical to any culture, but also fragile—as Ma Kilman learns, the memory of traditional knowledge can easily be obscured by transplantation and absorption into another culture.
Quote #5
Their whole world was moving,/or a large part of the world, and what began dissolving/was the fading sound of their tribal name for the rain,/the bright sound for the sun, a hissing noun for the river,/and always the word "never," and never the word "again." (XXVIII.iii.151-152)
As the narrator takes us on the journey through the Middle Passage, we can see how quickly tribal bonds and identity dissolve in the face of unthinkable brutality. Walcott once again emphasizes the importance of naming and the use of a mother tongue in the preservation of identity, something that is deliberately taken from the enslaved people as they are stripped of their independence and will.
Quote #6
I stood/in a village whose fires flickered in my head/with tongues of speech I no longer understood,/but where my flesh did not need to be translated;/then I heard patois again, as my ears unclogged. (XXXII.ii.167)
The narrator returns to St. Lucia and feels the awkwardness of a stranger, even though he is a native son. Although he feels kinship to the people of the island because of his appearance, he has to fight past his loss of language before he can truly feel part of things again.