18 pages • 36 minutes read
Derek WalcottA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
If “The Almond Trees” were a painting—given its lush sense of place, palette, and its careful detailing it reflects Walcott’s early interest in painting—the figure would barely be noticed: the lonely fisherman casting into the morning surf, his mongrel dog playing a careless game of fetch while the fisherman works his pole.
The fisherman is the lone Caribbean figure in the poem, and as such, compared to the carefree European tourists who will, within hours, stretch out lazily in the fierce tropical sun to tan, the fisherman symbolizes the practical, hard-working Caribbean people and their long-established relationship with the land and the ocean. Unlike the late-rising tourists, the fisherman is intent and diligent, up early; unlike the oiled tourists, he understands that the natural gifts of the islands are not to be wasted as a mere playground for the lazy and the wealthy. He works the land with respect—it is his livelihood. “Foam-haired, salt-grizzled” (Line 10), he embodies the spirit of the island’s working-class people.
In a poem that valorizes the community spirit of multiculturalism, positing that the way forward for the Caribbean culture is to embrace its past without shame or anger, the focus on the furnace-sun with its “fierce acetylene air” (Line 23) and the sand’s “white-hot ash underheel” (Line 28) symbolizes those elements of the beach
By Derek Walcott
A Careful Passion
Derek Walcott
Adam's Song
Derek Walcott
A Far Cry from Africa
Derek Walcott
Dream on Monkey Mountain
Derek Walcott
Love After Love
Derek Walcott
Midsummer XXVII
Derek Walcott
Omeros
Derek Walcott
Pantomime
Derek Walcott
Ruins of a Great House
Derek Walcott
Sabbaths, WI
Derek Walcott
The Flock
Derek Walcott
The Schooner Flight
Derek Walcott
To Return To The Trees
Derek Walcott