Mass Man
Derek Walcott
‘Through a great lion’s head clouded by mange
a black clerk growls.’
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Mass man - a pun with a double meaning, carnival paraders are called ‘mass men’
but Walcott is also playing with the idea that these men are acting as one ‘mass’,
they are losing their individual identities in favour of forming a new voice as a single
crowd during the parade
Mange - a disease caused by mites where an animal starts to lose patches of fur
Clerk - someone who works in an office, doing administrative work (keeping
accounts and records)
Flaunting - showing off
Metaphors - words or visual images that create a meaning beyond their literal sense
- that symbolise or reference something beyond themselves
Coruscating - glittering, also brilliant intelligence
Mincing - dainty, usually referred to when a man affects a feminine style of
behaviour
Fancies - feats of the imagination, or superficial, lighthearted displays of emotion
Making style - showing off, or creating a new style of something - a popular West
Indian phrase
Radiance - a state of glowing or shining
Rigged - set up in a rough, hasty way (the child is ‘rigged like a bat’ - he has been
made up quickly to look like a bat)
Gibbet - a gallows, a wooden post where men are hanged to death
Bull-whipped - whipped by a bullwhip - a long, heavy leash
Metronome - a device that keeps regular time by swinging back and forth, used by
musicians
Mania - a state of frenzy or chaos in the mind
Penitential - bowed in remorse or regret for something, repenting for wrongdoings
, Recollect - collect up or remember
STORY / SUMMARY
Stanza 1: The poem opens with the image of a carnival procession: decaying lion’s
head, uncannily a black man growls out of his mouth - in everyday life, this man’s job is
a clerk. Next, a man appears inside a golden wire peacock - the effect looks like a fan,
showing off its jewels. The speaker remarks that these are ‘metaphors’, and shining,
brilliant feats of the imagination.
Stanza 2: The speaker tells us that he recognises some of these people - Hector
Mannix is a water works clerk, and he also recognises Boysie, who is dressed as a
woman with mangoes for ‘breastplates’, he shows off flamboyantly like Cleopatra (see
context). They shout ‘Join us’, inviting spectators to join in on the festivities, but they
also shout at a child who’s dressed like a bat, and the child collapses to the ground,
crying.
Stanza 3: The speaker switches to himself, using first person narration - he states
defiantly ‘But I am dancing’, as if to refuse their invitation to join them. He asks them to
‘look’ at him at his whipped body swings from a gallows, like a fruit bat, like a
metronome that keeps the beat to their dancing. He says that his own mania is a
‘terrible calm’ - not like the frenzied collective mania of the dancers.
Stanza 4: He says that in the morning, when they are all regretful and feeling sorry for
themselves - perhaps hungover, or deflated from the excitement of the day before -
someone is going to have to remember what happened, to sift and collect the
remnants of what happened at the carnival, someone has to write poems for them, to
record these people and the event in history, the implication being that the speaker
himself is that person.
SPEAKER / VOICE
The poem starts in third person, describing dancers at a carnival. It switches to a
first person narrative perspective in the third stanza, where the speaker says that
he is like a hanging man from a gallows, swinging so the dancers can keep time. The
joyous and celebratory tone of the opening becomes macabre (disturbing and
suggesting death). Finally, the last stanza uses direct address to speak directly to
