SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN DEREK WALCOTT’S DREAM ON MONKEY MOUNTAIN M.Vanisree Associate Professor, Department of English, S.V Engineering College for Women, Tirupati. E-mail: vanisrinivas14@rediffmail.com Derek Alton Walcott, a prominent playwright, poet and painter was born at St.Lucia which is an island in the Caribbean region that formerly belonged to the British Empire, but gained independence in 1979. He is the founder of Trinidad Theatre Workshop and has written a large number of plays for this workshop. He was of mixed black, Dutch and English origin. St.Lucia had a hybrid British and French influence and it was an island that belonged to the British and French alternately. He is universally recognized for his multicultural commitment. His enthrallment of painting reflects in his work references to the great European artists like Cezanna, and Gaugin. Later, he shifted himself in the field of writing and concerned himself with the problems of his country. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1992. In the Derek’s play Dream on Monkey Mountain we find an evinced interest in the situation of his island of St.Lucia and he wished to chronicle his island. He was filled with an intense desire to depict the core and essence of his Caribbean environment. Later, he approached the theme with greater maturity and he was able to overlook the faults of his ancestors who were both victims and in a sense beneficiary of the slave trade. In the play, we see there a