How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #1
Hector ran, splashing/in the shallows mixed with the drizzle, towards Achille,/his cutlass lifted. The surf, in anger, gnashing its tail like a foaming dogfight. Men kill/their own brothers in rage, but the madman who tore/Achille's undershirt from one shoulder also tore at his heart. (III.i.16-17)
Hatred takes many different forms, and for Hector and Achille, it is mostly rooted in jealousy and a sense of inadequacy in the face of Helen's beauty. As the men slash at each other, there's something more important at stake here than their skins: The fight for Helen is the fight for dignity and emotional well-being.
Quote #2
He had resigned/from that haunt of middle-clarse farts, an old club/with more pompous arses than any flea could find,/a replica of the Raj, with gins-and-tonic/from black, white-jacketed servitors whose sonic/judgement couldn't distinguish a secondhand-car/salesman from Manchester from the phony pukka/tones of ex-patriates. (V.i.25)
Major Plunkett retreats from his native England to escape the class war that wounded his pride on a daily basis. But he finds that the ex-pats on St. Lucia aim to recreate the caste system they left behind, even though all of them were at the bottom of it back home. Ugh.
Quote #3
Murder throbbed in his wrists/to the loudspeaker's pelvic thud, her floating move./She was selling herself like the island, without/any pain, and the village did not seem to care/that it was dying in its change. (XXI.i.111)
Jealousy rears its ugly head for Achille here, though not for the first or last time. His anger is not just for Hector or any of the men who might admire Helen—it's for the new lifestyle that threatens to take over the traditional life of the village.
Quote #4
He turned his face to the wall. Whoever she was,/however innocent her joy, he couldn't take it/anymore. A transport passed, and in the silence/he felt his heart sicken, watching her as she brushed/her hair slowly and stopped. (XXI.iii.115)
As a jilted lover, Achille is grasping for the shreds of his dignity, looking for peace from the hatred that claws at his heart.
Quote #5
The lance of his hatred entered her with no sound,/yet she came and lay next to him, and they lay quietly/as two logs laid parallel on moonlit sand. (XXI.iii.115)
No, you're not imagining the sexual overtones of these lines. Achille and Helen have just had a fight over her infidelities (imagined or not). There may not be any actual sex going on here, but the animosity flowing from Achille is pretty, um, invasive.
Quote #6
She had timed it well. A little intimacy/between us girls. She'd seen the Land Rover in town/no doubt,/but not this time, Miss Helen, non merci./We aren't having any confession together;/then hated herself for her rage. (XXII.iii.123)
Helen seems to be the center for all things concerning hatred, jealousy, and rage in this poem, and she certainly rubs Maud Plunkett the wrong way. Helen's visit highlights the antagonism between the two women, which may be fueled by jealousy on Maud's part, racial bias on both sides, and Helen's ability to take what she wants in any situation.
Quote #7
[…] a republic without class,/tiered only on wealth, and eaten with prejudice/from its pillared base, the Athenian demos demonic and its ocracy crass,/corrupting the blue-veined marble with its disease,/stillborn as a corpse, for all those ideals went cold/in the heat of its hate. (XLI.i.206)
Hatred flows both ways as the narrator travels through the Deep South. The classic architecture leads him to think about the Greek culture that inspired it and the ideals that supposedly transferred to the New World. He realizes that there's nothing like hatred (dehumanizing a whole race) to pervert a good thing (democracy).
Quote #8
"This is we Calypso,/Captain, who treat we like swine, you ain't seeing shore./Let this sun burn you black and blister your lips so/it hurt them to give orders, f*** you and your war." (XL.ii.203-204)
When the narrator is in Greece, he imagines Odysseus on his ship and the response of his crew, forced into dangers and eternal wandering not of their own making. He's clearly also thinking of the Middle Passage and the curses that might be on the lips of that "crew" as well.
Quote #9
Feel the shame, the self-hate/draining from all our bodies in the exhausted sleeping/of a rumshop closed Sunday. There was no difference/between me and Philoctete. (XLVIII.iii.245)
Most feelings of self-reproach refer back to the shared wound between Philoctete and the narrator, which gives shame an ancestral root. In these cases, shame not only makes them feel dreadful about themselves, it isolates them from the community at large and from the people they are meant to love.