Omeros

Character Analysis

The Bad Granddad of Western Lit

Let'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 when his girlfriend introduces him to the "authentic" Homer by giving him his Greek name, he becomes obsessed with the presence of the ancient poet in his life. In fact, the narrator can even feel the eyes of a plaster bust of Homer gazing upon him while he makes out with Antigone. Creepy.

Voyeurism aside, the weight and influence of Homer's art become the defining element in the life of this poet. Once the narrator hears the call to epic poetry ("And I heard a hollow moan exhaled from a vase"), it's on like Donkey Kong, and there's no turning back. He sees the world through epic-colored glasses and finds that he can't refrain from playing with Homeric associations, even for situations where they don't seem to belong. Take his Greek lesson with Antigone, for instance:

[…] and O was the conch-shell's invocation, mer was
both mother and sea in our Antillean patois, os, a grey bone, and the white surf as it crashes
and spreads its sibilant colar on a lace shore. (II.iii.14)

The narrator is so enchanted with the sound of the name Omeros that he puts an international spin on it as he parses it out: first Caribbean (O-mer), then Latin (os). He does this not primarily because it makes sense (there's no Greek involved), but because it fits his train of thought. Homer's reputation as the granddad of Western-Literature-As-We-Know-It gives the narrator a unifying principle to bring together the two cultural halves of his life.

Poets Anonymous

Because Omeros is the foundation of Everything, the narrator sees him everywhere. He belongs to all times and cultures, and becomes the embodiment of the narrator's own struggle with his professional and personal lives.

When he sees the ancient poet in London, the narrator says Omeros looks "like a heap of slag-coal crusting the tiers/with their summering tourists. Eyes shut, the frayed lips/chewed the breeze, the beard curled like the dog's ears/of his turned down Odyssey" (XXXVIII.i.194). He's a down-and-out bargeman who gets chased off the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields for his vagrancy.

But while Omeros—the ancient Greek giant of literature—passes more or less unseen in the modern world, he also goes beyond being Homer to become an archetype of the poet who appears in all cultures over time. In other words, he stops being Homer, the granddad of Western-Literature-As-We-Know-It, and becomes the Poet, the granddad of All-Literature-As-We-Know-It. It's in this role that Omeros fluidly exchanges identities with Seven Seas.

We first see this happen in a big way when Catherine Weldon surveys the slaughter of Native Americans and finds Omeros-as-shaman sitting inside a tent:

Through its door
I saw white-eyed Omeros, motionless. He must
be deaf, too, I thought, as well as blind, since his head
never turned, and then he lifted the dry rattle in one hand (XLIII.ii.216)

The scene mirrors exactly the moment in Achille's ancestral village when he finds a sorrowful Seven-Seas-as-griot mourning the loss of his people (more on this over on Achille's page elsewhere in this section). These two characters represent the transmission of culture and history through language, an issue that Walcott meditates on repeatedly in the work.

Recognizing this important role of the poet throughout time and among disparate cultures allows the slipperiness of Omeros's character. Whether he manifests himself as a marble bust (representing antiquity and art) or as an African storyteller, the aim is the same: the preservation of cultural memory and beauty.

A Virgil to His Dante

If you're going to "do" epic poetry, you have to have two things: a guide and a trip to the Underworld. Luckily for us, Walcott has no plans to stint on either thing.

Omeros is the clear choice for a mentor/guide to pull Walcott-as-narrator through, yet his identity is a complicated thing. He can't go on the trip if Seven Seas doesn't come along, too, but the swapping of identities on the trip to the Underworld is so rapid it might make you a little seasick. It's like the two are flickering or flashing before the narrator's eyes in order to align them more closely in our minds:

So one changed from marble with a dripping chiton
in the early morning on that harp-wired sand
to a foam-headed fisherman in his white, torn

undershirt, but both of them had the look of men
whose skins are preserved in salt, whose accents were born
from guttural shoal, whose vision was wide as rain

sweeping over the sand (LVI.i.281)

Although the home sands of the two figures are separated by vast seas, the commonalities between them emphasize the unity of purpose in poetry and language—and in their roles in the poet's life. He needs both of them to complete his major poetic mission: to praise his homeland and show his love for it to the world.

And really, that's what the trip to the Underworld is all about: The narrator has to see what happens to "bad poets" (the ones who work selfishly) in order to understand how he is meant to work and find purpose for his verse. Omeros tells him to leave his "wrong love" behind for greater things: "Love is good, but the love of your own people is greater" (LVI.iii.284). In other words, love more than just yourself.

Seven Seas backs this up with a tongue-lashing, reminding the narrator that all the wandering in the world doesn't make a good poet. The work is always internal; it must come from the heart and home shores.

In the end, it is Omeros who inspires the narrator to sing of St. Lucia as he had so desired. His fears of failure, of not doing the land justice, are swept aside as he follows the lead of his mentor:

My voice was going
under the strength of his voice, which carried so far
that a black frigate heard it, steadying its wing. (LVII.i.287)

Perhaps the Caribbean poet (a.k.a. our author-turned-narrator) and the Greek one are an odd couple, but it's clear that Walcott needs the ancient dude to clarify his voice and vision.