To Return To The Trees

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1974

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Literary Analysis: Classical Literature and the Epic

Throughout his poems, plays, and visual art, Derek Walcott acknowledges and questions Western literary and historical traditions. His mastery of traditional forms and motifs includes experimentation that challenges the ability of those forms to tell modern, comprehensive stories. While his use of formal verse structures and his exploration of classical and Biblical narratives acknowledge a collective past, Walcott’s work also integrates a modern, personal perspective, making for poetic narratives that speak on both a global and an intimate level.

Walcott’s work draws especially on Western classical philosophy and the poetic epic. Understanding how epic poetry shapes cultures and defines—from ancient Greece and Rome, to medieval Florence, to England in the grip of civil war—Walcott searches for the language suitable for a modern epic. His later works “The Bounty” and Omeros move more directly to epic form, but even in “To Return to the Trees,” his scope can be seen. The voices of the Western tradition emerge in the poem, specifically in the appearances of Ben Jonson and Seneca, but also in the concept of the “senex,” the wise old man. Samson from the Christian Bible and Atlas from Greek mythology personify the speaker’s idea that moments of balance, the grey in-between, the “heart at peace” (Line 30) provide more opportunities for nobility and transcendence than can be found in warfare and among “factions” (Line 32). This idea turns the traditional epic, one which foregrounds great battles and deeds of war, inside out. The same forces that separate us from this epic past pose a greater threat to language and connection: time and natural phenomena. Seneca’s “heroes tempered by whirlwinds” (Line 48), the “felled almond” (Line 11), the “gnarled poet /bearded by the whirlwind” (Lines 13-14): in this poem, nature’s force overwhelms man’s efforts. Language, even that of our greatest poets and philosophers, cannot be stopped from “going under the sand’ (Line 54), no matter how lyrical.

Cultural Analysis: Post-Colonial Literature

The term “Post-Colonial Literature” most often refers to the practice of examining works by writers from areas formerly colonized by European or Western governments, especially focusing on the ways these writers rediscover or reassess cultural identity in the aftermath of colonization. Walcott’s Caribbean home, St. Lucia, gained its independence from the United Kingdom in 1979 after around three centuries of French and British colonization. Europeans subdued the native population and brought enslaved Africans to the island to work on sugar plantations. By the 20th century, St. Lucia began following a path toward self-rule, with a fledgling representative government and a constitution as early as 1924. Born into a St. Lucia in the process of defining itself, Derek Walcott created in the context of native, African, French, British, Dutch and other influences. Walcott’s work reflects his love of the English language in his wordplay, his intricate acoustic features, and in his allusions to the works of the Western Canon. His focus on geography and nature reflects modern ecological concerns, as well as his devotion to the terrain of his homeland.

Walcott identifies himself as a hybrid of cultural identities, choosing to create from all available influences and tools. While some Post-Colonial writers focus on separating from colonizing influences in favor of a return to native cultures and traditions, Walcott interweaves all facets of his heritage, both personal and community-based. “To Return to the Trees” demonstrates Walcott’s dual artistic persona as he described it throughout his career: its narrative, location, and purpose come out of Walcott’s Caribbean sensibility, his sense of home and belonging, while its formal aspects, wordplay, and allusions to the past derive from his love of the English language and his affinity for Western civilization and culture. For Walcott, only through the inclusion of European influence and context could it be confronted and examined, mined for its value, and held accountable for its cruelty and corruption.