CARIBBEAN PREDICAMENT OF IDENTITY CRISIS: AN EMBLEM IN DEREK WALCOTT’S PLAYS

Abstract

The Caribbean is “a place with no stable cultural origin” (Bongie 23). According to Samad, the West Indian whose self is a “heterogeneous entity” has been playing the character assigned to him/her by “other ‘cultures,” and the West Indian has admitted the character “uncritically” (227). The hybrid character that the West Indian has played is evidently equivalent of a “mimic man” (Samad 227). It is this imitation that creates the West Indian identity as a fusion of the colonial and colonized perspectives. The fusion of different cultures creates a de novo hybrid culture depicting the characteristics of both the foreigner and indigenous. Walcott’s work bestows upon us a glance of the creation of contemporary Caribbean identities; and investigating his work can facilitate us to recognize the contemporary Caribbean predicaments and efforts in identity-making in the context of the colonial inheritance of global socio-economic and political inequalities.