28 pages • 56 minutes read
Derek WalcottDream on Monkey Mountain
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1970A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Signs and Portents
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.
Courts
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. However, the trial is a farce that parodies the colonial legal system, pointing out the absurdity of colonial rule: The jury is two prisoners wearing towels as wigs, Lestrade’s speech is pretentious gibberish, and Makak has no legal counsel.
While the first trial is ridiculous, the second trial is serious. In the play’s penultimate scene, Makak has become an African king, presiding over a court on a golden litter accompanied by his generals. During this trial, a list of famous white people are condemned for the crime of being white, the apparition of the white woman is condemned as a potentially corrupting force, and Moustique is charged with betraying the dream of his people. All of them are sentenced to death, vividly dramatizing the way systems of power repeat themselves and mirror other oppressive systems.
The Moon
Within the play, the moon is commonly associated with the white woman who appears in Makak’s dream and calls on him to begin his journey. At the same time, the presence of the moon brings on Makak’s visionary fits. It is a distant, unreachable object—a goal to strive toward—and an integral part of Makak.
The moon is significant for other characters also. Makak uses the image of the moon to explain to Lestrade why his identity as a biracial person complicates his existence: the moon (the distant white colossus) suppresses Lestrade’s black identity. When Lestrade relents and confesses his sins, he sings a song about the “silvery moon” (298), an archaic euphemism for black people. When access to the moon is diluted to other characters, the symbolic meaning of the moon collapses in on itself. Rather than any one single identity or reflection of any one individual, the symbolic meaning of the moon becomes all-encompassing: The rise and the fall of the tribes is like the “gold and the silver scales of the sun and the moon, and that is named progress” (306).
By the end of the play, the moon converges entirely with the apparition of the white woman. When she appears, she is finally visible to people other than Makak and is no longer able to inspire him. The woman and the moon have lost their individual appeal: To Souris, she is as “plain as the moon” (317), while the Corporal demands that Makak execute her. Having lost his inspiration, having gotten lost on his quest for identity, Makak accepts his fate. He executes the woman and destroys the symbolic meaning that both she and the moon held in his dream.
Related Titles
By Derek Walcott
