How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #1
This wound I have stitched into Plunkett's character./He has to be wounded, affliction is one theme/of this work, this fiction, since every "I" is a/fiction finally. (V.ii.28)
Just in case you are tired of searching for themes in literary works, Walcott helps you out on this one. Note also his provocative concept of the first person narrator as always fictional. It's something to consider when you're thinking about the autobiographical nature of this narrative.
Quote #2
And I heard a hollow moan exhaled from a vase,/not for kings floundering in lances of rain; the prose/of abrupt fishermen cursing over canoes (II.iii.15)
The narrator hears the call of epic poetry as he's learning Homer's true name from his ex-girlfriend. But it's clear that although his inspiration has roots in the ancient past, he will re-purpose the elements of epic poetry to fashion a narrative from his own experience.
Quote #3
"Because Rhyme remains the parentheses of palms/shielding a candle's tongue, it is the language's/desire to enclose the loved world in its arms; or heft a coal-basket; only by its stages/like those groaning women will you achieve that height/whose wooden planks in couplets lift your pages/higher than those hills of infernal anthracite." (XIII.iii.75)
The narrator's father gets it: Language and poetry are the keepers of culture and memory. He also knows that his son will have to tell the story of their ancestors if he wishes to fulfill his ambition of greatness.
Quote #4
"They walk, you write;/keep to that narrow causeway without looking down,/climbing in their footsteps, that slow, ancestral beat/of those used to climbing roads; your own work owes them because the couplet of those multiplying feet/made your first rhymes." (XIII.iii.75)
The equation of physical labor done by those in the past and the work of the poet in the present makes us think of Seamus Heaney's "Digging," which addresses this same issue. Warwick wants to make sure that his son understands that his duty (and inspiration) as a poet has been determined by the suffering and work of his forbearers.
Quote #5
He found his Homeric coincidence./"Look, love, for instance,/near sunset, on April 12, hear this, the Ville de Paris/struck her colours to Rodney. Surrendered. Is this chance/or an echo? Paris gives the golden apple, a war is fought for an island called Helen?" (XIX.i.100)
Plunkett has let his passion for the Helens take him farther than any historian should go. The association between the French ship with the hapless Paris of Greek myth gives Plunkett the feeling that the battle was really fought for something and not just for the colonization of an island.
Quote #6
Time is the metre, memory the only plot. (XXIV.ii.129)
As Achille succumbs to his sun stroke/spirit journey, he makes this observation. Which means that he's either a natural poet, or Walcott is getting his chops in here. We vote for the latter. Either way, it's clear that the poet views poetry as the proper medium for history and storytelling.
Quote #7
My craft required the same/crouching care, the same crabbed, natural devotion/of the hand that stenciled a flowered window-frame/or planed an elegant canoe; its time was gone/with the spirit of the wood, as wood grew obsolete/and plasterers smoothed the blank page of white concrete. (XXXV.ii.227)
The narrator-poet reflects on the crafts, including his own, that are becoming obsolete with the advent of "progress." He sees it in the landscape of his island and knows that traditional ways of life, including the most traditional form of communication (i.e., poetry), are beginning to have no place in the world.
Quote #8
Didn't I want the poor/to stay in the same light so that I could transfix/them in amber, the afterglow of an empire,/preferring a shed of palm-thatch with tilted sticks/to that blue bus-stop? Didn't I prefer a road/from which tracks climbed into the thickening syntax/of colonial travellers, the measured prose I read as a schoolboy? (XXXV.ii.227)
As an artist, Walcott can't help but wonder about his motives for hating progress, and as such, have a serious discussion with himself about how he may be contributing to the poverty of his own people. Oops.
Quote #9
I was both there and not there. I was attending/the funeral of a character I'd created;/the fiction of her life needed a good ending/as much as mine (XLIII.ii.266)
Walcott does this amazing thing as narrator: He actually interacts in the timeline of the narrative as he's creating it. It's pretty fancy and mind-blowing. He also reinforces the idea that the first person ("I") is always fictional, no matter how autobiographical the story may seem.
Quote #10
Why not see Helen/as the sun saw her, with no Homeric shadow,/swinging her plastic sandals on that beach alone,/as fresh as the sea-wind? Why make the smoke a door? (LIV.ii.271)
Once again, Walcott questions his intentions, as well as those of his character, Major Plunkett. Why bother with the associations? Does it help Helen and her people? His answer: Not really, but I see the associations—so there.
Quote #11
When would the sails drop/from my eyes, when would I not hear the Trojan War/in two fishermen cursing in Ma Kilman's shop?/When would my head shake off its echoes like a horse/shaking off a wreath of flies? When would it stop,/the echo in the throat, insisting, "Omeros";/when would I enter that light beyond metaphor? (LIV.iii.271)
Walcott is essentially asking himself when he will cease to see the world through a poet's eyes or hear the voices of his people with a poet's ears. The answer is never.
Quote #12
Your wanderer is a phantom from the boy's shore./Mark you, he does not go; he sends his narrator;/he plays tricks with time because there are two journeys/in every odyssey, one on the worried water,/the other crouched and motionless, without noise./For both, "I" is a mast; a desk is a raft/for one, foaming with paper, and dipping the beak/of a pen in its foam, while an actual craft/carries the other to cities where people speak/a different language, or look at him differently (LVIII.ii.291)
Seven Seas/Omeros sets the narrator straight about the fiction of a first-person narrator as hero of the story. This is also a commentary on the purpose of narrative: It's not necessarily meant to report a true account of adventures. The real story is about the poet reflecting truth as he sees it with his "inner eyes."