Derek Walcott's Major Dramatic Works

Derek Walcott's Major Dramatic Works

Derek Walcott 1930-

Mountain won an Obie Award, and in 1992 Walcott received the Nobel Prize for literature.

MAJOR DRAMATIC WORKS

The importance of understanding and preserving West Indian culture is a prominent theme in Walcott's works. Many of his plays, often called "folk dramas," are firmly rooted in the common life and language of the West Indies, and they frequently evoke Caribbean dialect and legends. These folk dramas, including "The Sea at Dauphin," lone, Ti-Jean and His Brothers, andDream on Monkey Mountain, are considered his most effective work for the theater. "The Sea at Dauphin," a tale of the St. Lucian fishing community's struggle to survive the forces of the sea, is derived from West Indian folklore and marks Walcott's first use of the native idiom. Ti-Jean and His Brothers, in which a humble, sensible boy named Ti-Jean succeeds in outwitting the Devil, continues the folk tradition by blending a morality play and a West Indian fable. The play celebrates the triumph of native resourcefulness over imperialist power and also comments on racism and the exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. Walcott explained his use of folklore and dialectical speech in this work: "The great challenge for me was to write as powerfully as I could without writing down to the audience, so that the large emotions could be taken in by a fisherman or a guy on the street, even if he didn't