How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #4
The sadness sank into him slowly that he was home—/that dawn-sadness which ghosts have for their graves,/because the future reversed itself in him./He was his own memory, the shadow under the pier./His nausea increased, he walked down to the cold river/with the other shadows, saying, "Make me happier,/make me forget the future." (XXVI.ii.141)
Achille knows that this spirit journey will not have a happy ending, and that his return journey to his ancestral home won't be a sweet homecoming. He's melancholy because he knows what will happen to his people in the future, which is the past that he and everyone else on St. Lucia tries to suppress.
Quote #5
"We were the colour of shadows when we came down/with tinkling leg-irons to join the chains of the sea,/for the silver coins multiplying on the sold horizon,/and these shadows are reprinted on the white sand/of antipodal coasts, your ashen ancestors from the Bight of Benin, from the margin of Guinea." (XXVIII.i.149)
Here, the griot is singing a song after being taken into slavery. After Achille witnesses the enslavement of his ancestors, he hears the griot singing of their fate. The poet sets the lyrics for this catastrophe so that Achille will remember (as if he could forget), like a personal soundtrack to his existence.
Quote #6
So there went the Ashanti one way, the Mandingo another,/the Ibo another, the Guinea. Now each man was a nation/unto himself, without mother, father, brother. (XXVIII.i.150)
Walcott speaks here of the breaking of tribal bonds, something done by slavers on the Middle Passage to subjugate the people they captured. Ugh.