How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Section.Page)
Quote #1
The rage that he felt against Hector/was shame. To go crazy for an old bailing tin/crusted with rust! The duel of these fishermen/was over a shadow and its name was Helen. (III.i.17)
Achille's wound here is the loss of his lover, Helen, and the implications for his masculinity. He makes several references to the horns of the island as signs of his cuckolding, so we know that he's not merely sad that he's lost the company of his girl.
Quote #2
[…] a woman with a madras head-tie,/but the head proud, although it was looking for work./I felt like standing in homage to a beauty/that left, like a ship, widening eyes in its wake./"Who the hell is that?" a tourist near my table/asked a waitress. The waitress said, "She? She too proud!" (IV.iii.24)
So everyone is all like "She too proud" when describing Helen, but it's not clear what kind of pride we're talking about here. Is she arrogant? Or does she simply have self-respect and the desire to live life on her own terms, despite her poverty? Hmmm…
Quote #3
The carriers were women, not the fair, gentler sex./Instead, they were darker and stronger, and their gait/was made beautiful by balance, in their ascending/the narrow wooden ramp built steeply to the hull/of a liner tall as a cloud (XIII.ii.74)
For Walcott, there is an intimate connection between servitude and pride. Helen, for instance, holds her head proudly even though she's looking for work. The two are not mutually exclusive, and we see that in this vision of women who carried coal to the oceanliners back in the day. The work is menial, spine-crushing, and yields little—but the strength and grace of these women inspires Walcott's poetry.
Quote #4
Power went to Statics's head. He felt like the Pope in his bulletproof jeep; he learnt how to atone/for their poverty, waving from the parted door/of the gliding Comet, past neglected sections,/nodding, dipping two fingers stuck with a power/that parted the sea of their roaring affections. (XX.ii.106-107)
Quote #5
"We've no work, Helen."/"Is not work I looking for."/Pride edged that voice; she'd honed her arrogance/on Maud's nerves when she worked here, but there was sorrow/in that rudeness. (XXIII.iii.124)
Maud can't even when it comes to Helen, who seems brazen and opportunistic to her. But there's something more to Helen than her usual arrogance and it acts on Maud's anger. The result: Helen gets a fiver out of it and Maud continues to fume.
Quote #6
"A name means something. The qualities desired in a son,/and even a girl-child; so even the shadows who called/you expected one virtue; since every name is a blessing,/since I am remembering the hope I had for you as a child./Unless the sound means nothing. Then you would be nothing./Did they think you were nothing in that other kingdom?" (XXV.iii.137)
Afolabe is not impressed by Achille's indifference to his own name. His speech here is meant to instill some pride into his son, who has been numb to the importance of his ancestral identity.
Quote #7
The worst crime is to leave a man's hands empty./Men are born makers, with that primal simplicity/in every maker since Adam. This is pre-history,/that itching instinct in the criss-crossed net/of their palms, its wickerwork. They could not stay idle too long. (XXVIII.ii.150)
In the struggle to survive the Middle Passage, the psychological battle is major. The slave traders try to strip independent and proud people of their will by breaking up family/tribal units, chaining their bodies—and taking away their identities. The ability to do something, like working at a craft, defined these people's lives in their home villages and the stasis of the voyage crushes their souls.
Quote #8
Pride set in Helen's face after this, like a stone/bracketed with Hector's name; her lips were incised/by its dates in parenthesis. She seemed more stern,/more ennobled by distance as she slowly crossed/the hot street of the village like a distant sail/on the horizon. Grief heightened her. (XLVI.ii.233)
Helen's pride is further defined as she suffers the loss of Hector. This is no longer arrogance; Helen has the dignity of a survivor. Grief sets her farther apart from the mere mortals with whom she shares the island.
Quote #9
He thought of Tumbly and Scott. They'd fought the same war,/but he limped with pride at being the walking wounded/in the class-struggle, in the hotel's high ranking,/its brass-buttons and tips, and he might have ended that way, saluting taxis and crisply thanking gentlemen. (L.ii.252)
Some of the worst wounds are the ones we can't see, and that is certainly the case with Major Plunkett. He loves St. Lucia and takes a great deal of comfort in his ex-pat lifestyle because it helps him escape the indignity of class warfare in his native England.
Quote #10
In one pit were the poets. Selfish phantoms with eyes/who wrote with them only, saw only surfaces/in nature and men, and smiled at their similes,/condemned in their pit to weep at their own pages./And that was where I had come from. Pride in my craft./Elevating myself. (LVIII.iii.293)
The selfishness of these false poets is defined by a life of self-centeredness and ambition. The narrator has the benefit of a trip to the Underworld to open his eyes to this fault and will seek to remedy it by developing "inner eyes" that see truths beyond the physical world.