First Response
Feb 24th, 2011 by jessicafisher255
Trip of a Lifetime
Walking down the blue cobble stone streets of Puerto Rico, snapping a picture of my boyfriend’s feet upon the cobble stone, set us apart as typical, everyday tourists. In fact, that is what we were. We were on vacation, wanting to escape the cold New York weather. We went to a tropical island and walked about the warm historic Old San Juan. We ate at restaurants; we explored the old historic fort and the rainforest; we celebrated in the San Cristobel festival, where we rubbed shoulders with the locals. We, as tourists, got to enjoy the island of Puerto Rico in a way that the locals do not. We were the ones buying souvenirs and having locals cut coconuts in half on the streets so we, and other tourists, could try fresh coconut water. Although tourism plays a major economic role in Puerto Rico as well as the other Caribbean islands, in Walcott’s epic poem “Omeros” we also see how tourism can drain an island of its resources, how it can place its native people on display and make a show out of the island’s essence. Throughout his poem, Walcott shows how St. Lucia and her people have been fought over between two super nations, France and England, and how the island being looked at as an economic assess has taken away from the island’s soul.
Because St. Lucia is a small island located in the Caribbean, it is a perfect location for tourists. It has warm weather all year round, beaches and beautiful water. In Walcott’s poem, we see how large countries and rich businesses have taken advantage of St. Lucia and its people by making it a tourism attraction. Walcott creates the metaphor of one of St. Lucia’s natural resources, the ocean and compares it to a symbol of capitalism.
The gold sea flat as a credit-card, extending its line to a beach that now looked just like everywhere else, Greece or Hawaii. Now the goddamn souvenir felt absurd, excessive. The painted gourds, the shells. Their own faces as brown as gourds. (229)
We see how Walcott is comparing the coastline of St. Lucia to a credit card. This is because so many hotels are built along the coast-line promising it’s guests “beach front access”. Tourists come to these islands to lay on the beach and to swim in the clean oceans.
Walcott is also showing that tourism is taking away the uniqueness of St. Lucia. Tourists are not getting the same spirit out of the island as Ma Kilman and Philocete do. They do not see the healing powers of the island, or feel the deep rooted history of the island’s slaves like Philocete. To the tourists, St. Lucia is just another vacation spot.
The island’s remnants are also up for consumerism. The natives of the island try to commercialize off of the travelers by selling shells and “fake African masks” (228). The tourists do not get the symbolism or the meaning behind these artifacts; they just purchase them because they look nice, or rustic. The people of St. Lucia are also on display. Tourists take their pictures to see what an “native” looks like, such as “Philoctete [who] smiles for the tourists, who try taking his soul with their cameras”(3) and the natives try to put on a show “boys balanced on logs or, riding old tires, shouted up past the hull to tourists on the rails to throw don coins”(73). Because the natives of the island try to make a profit on themselves, their faces are also becoming like the gourds they sell. They are losing the spirit of their heritage, history and of St. Lucia.
Upon returning to his home island, Walcott is saddened to see how tourism has drained St. Lucia of her majesty and mysticism. Walcott sees that St. Lucia is becoming another tourist stop, like the countless other islands that people vacation at. Walcott sees how St. Lucia and its people are losing a part of themselves to tourism and capitalism. He does not want St. Lucia to lose what, to him, makes her so special. He does not want her to become worn out and used up and then forgotten about.
Works Cited
1) Walcott, Derek. Omeros. New York: Farrar, Strause and Giroux. 1990. Print
