Dream on Monkey Mountain

Numerous omens appear throughout the play. A vision of a white woman appears to Makak in a dream and instructs him to go to Africa, where he will discover his identity. The mysterious figure of Basil, who often wears the guise of Baron Samedi, functions as an ominous warning of mortality. Moustique finds a spider and her eggs in Makak’s cabin, and reads them as a harbinger of death. 

Characters’ reactions to these signs speak volumes about their ability to thrive in Makak’s dream world. Moustique refuses to take Basil seriously, eagerly arguing with him about his clothes. Moustique also tries to bypass fate by killing the spider he sees, but Moustique’s dismissal of these portents is incorrect—by failing to interpret these supernatural encounters correctly, he meets his untimely demise. Makak, on the other hand, is better at gauging the significance of the signs he encounters—for instance, he interprets the apparition he sees in his dream appropriately and tries to follow its message. 

Two significant scenes are set in courtrooms laden with post-colonialist tension. The first of these occurs early in the play, when Corporal Lestrade holds a mock trial of Makak despite having no real judiciary jurisdiction or authority. The island’s colonial past echoes in Lestrade’s demands that they speak English and his numerous references to the English legal system—the Corporal posits that as a half white person, he is the logical inheritor and rightful embodiment of such a system.