Here is a detailed analysis of Derek Walcott’s poem “The Castaway”; it’s tailored towards students taking the CIE / Cambridge A-Level syllabus but will be useful for anyone who’s working on understanding the poem at any level.
Great for revision, missed lessons, boosting analytical / r...
“The starved eye devours the seascape for the morsel
Of a sail.
The horizon threads it infinitely.
Action breeds frenzy. I lie,
Sailing the ribbed shadow of a palm,
Afraid lest my own footprints multiply.”
(Full poem unable to be reproduced due to copyright)
VOCABULARY
Castaway - a person who has been stranded on land after a shipwreck (the ship has
sunk at sea and they have made their way to shore)
Devour - eat hungrily
Seascape - the view at sea, similar to a landscape
Morsel - a small piece of something, usually relating to food
Lest - in case
Trumpet-flower - a type of plant that has white or yellow flowers that droop down and
are shaped like a trumpet
Sandfly - a blood sucking fly that lives in sandy areas
Contemplative - thinking a lot about something
Evacuation - leaving somewhere, (or in this case going to the toilet)
Polyp - a sea anemone
Thwanged - a loud, echoing sound (onomatopoeic - similar to ‘twang’)
Godhead - the essence of the divine / the essence of God (in Christianity, this word is
used to refer to the holy trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost)
Sea louse - a parasitic sea creature that feeds off fish
Babel - a city in the Bible (Babylon)
, STORY/SUMMARY
The speaker is looking out to the horizon at sea, searching without success for a sail -
the sign of a ship. The horizon is flat and thin, like a thread. The person’s eye is like
the eye of a needle, threading the horizon.
Action creates panic and chaos, so the speaker lies down and is still. He considers
the shadow of the palm tree on the sand, which makes a ribbed pattern. He is afraid
of making any steps in the sand, of multiplying his footprints.
Around the beach, sand is blowing in the wind - it forms thin wisps, like smoke. The
sand is bored and changes shape, shifting the shape and position of the sand dunes.
The sea makes shapes in the sand as the tide rises, but then like a bored child it
leaves the shapes it has created as the tide flows back out.
There is a net of vines with yellow trumpet flowers, growing out into space - into
‘nothing’. The speaker thinks about nothingness: it is like the rage inside a sandfly’s
head as it searches for blood to suck from its victims.
The speaker lists the things that he derives pleasure from: morning, the process of
thinking while going to the toilet, thinking about ‘the dried leaf, nature’s plan’, which
may mean contemplating the cycle of life and death.
Dog feces turn white in the sun and form a crust, like coral. This also demonstrates
the cycle of life: we are made of earth, and that is how we begin. In our guts there is
the beginning of life - defecation is part of this process.
If the speaker listens, he can hear the polyp growing, but the silence is disrupted by
two waves crashing together in the sea. He takes a sea louse and splits it open, the
crack of its shell makes a noise like thunder.
This action makes him feel powerful, godlike with the ability to annihilate life. Art and
self? The awareness of his own power leads him to get rid of some ‘dead metaphors’.
The last few tumbling images of the poem are the metaphors which the speaker tries
to expel from his mind: the almond tree’s ‘leaf-like heart’, the brain rotting like a nut,
hatching sea lice, sandflies and maggots, and the final images of the poem: A green
wine bottle filled with a ‘gospel’ - words of spirituality which communicate a Christian
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