Sisy Wong

October 25, 2019

The Sea is History

Derek Walcott used the Bible which records God send ten disasters to the King of Egypt to claim that he thinks it is a challenge that God send to African. In the first stanza, the poet states that he thinks the history of Africa is glorious but undiscovered. In this poem, the “sea” represents the history of Africa. In the first stanza, “where is your tribal memory” which refers to things in the sea are those lost cultures, languages and so on of Africans. Besides, in the #8 stanza, “Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors who sank without tombs” which claims that the greedy and clod- blood of the colonialists destroying the natural ecosystem of Africa. One thing I like in this poem is that rather than just saying the European took away the history and culture of Africa, Walcott suggests to the contrary by using the story of ten disasters to substitute that it’s a disaster to African. Walcott also claims that things that happened in Africa are not their real history as the colonialists controlled them. Thus, things in the sea are the true history that colonialists tried to prevent them to learn and tried to assimilate them.