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Imperialism In Derek Walcott's The Sea Is History

931 Words4 Pages

Imperialism has been forced in different places around the world for many centuries. As Cambridge Dictionaries states, imperialism is a “system in which a country rules other countries, sometimes having used force to get power over them”. Nowadays, Imperialism is still present in a disguised way; we even use it sometimes without us knowing that we do. We can notice while reading Derek Walcott’s biography, that he is a Saint Lucian poet. He has the perfect inspiration for the poem “The Sea is History”; his own home, his island. Walcott understands perfectly what imperialism means because his island, just like many other places around the world, has endured the consequences of being oppressed by other nation. Even though his island is independent, …show more content…

We have seen throughout many years history from the Old World and as proof of what happened they have several objects. But, where are our objects that prove what has happened in our island? The awfully few items that had been found in the Caribbean have been taken to museums outside of our islands. Since we live in an island, the majority of our past and evidence of it, is submerged in the ocean. Walcott confirms this in the verses three and four of his poem: “.... The sea. The sea// has locked them up. The sea is History.” (Walcott, 3-4). Slaves often died on their way to the New World. When colonists realized this, they dumped those bodies into the ocean. This analysis can be seen in the verse thirteen, when he says: “Bones soldered by coral to bone”. This verse supports the argument that the sea holds the history, and that we know so little about it. With Sea is History’s first strophe in mind, I can say that to a moderate extent, history is biased. My reason of saying this is because as stated before, most of the history is submerged in our oceans. Therefore, there could be numerous events from what we have been taught that could change if those artifacts are collected. Right now in schools, colleges and many other places are teaching us history in one perspective: the Imperialistic

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