This is a critical analysis of the epic Poem Omeros by Walcott, following paragraphs are the instructions of the professor, he also gave some essays that we can reference and learn about how to critique and analysis about the poem. Just pick two central topic to discuss, e.g. themes of colonialism, identidy, use of literary languages, shaping of the characters.
As I’m sure you’ve noticed, to read a long poem requires sustained and active inquiry—the sort of thing that’s impossible to render in something so abbreviated as a 500-word response paper. I’m therefore asking you to undertake a slightly more elaborate project on Walcott’s Omeros that’s appropriate for the complexity of the poem and its position at the end of our semester.
Keeping with the short exercises you’ve been producing so far, your focus should continue to be very specific. There’s a lot of room to move regarding any subject in Omeros, so a more restricted topic is in order to yield greater critical acuity and a well-developed analysis. As always, you should define your topic and articulate carefully the terms of your investigation, then set about supporting your contentions by offering a close, thorough reading of select passages in the text. What I would like you to do differently with this project is to investigate what some other folks who have thought about Omeros have to say about your topic. So in the process of composing your study, please consult at least one substantial, relevant critical discussion of the poem. I don’t mean that you should merely pillage some random article for a pithy quote in order to demonstrate the required “research” component for the assignment. Instead, you should engage any secondary material at the level of concept and argument, deal with the points being made about the poem in an effort to further your own analysis. You can agree with or refute such work; the point is to learn something and contribute to the sphere of critical discourse around it. To facilitate this part of the enterprise, I’ve uploaded to a Canvas module (called Omeros Library) PDFs of a few articles that might be germane to things we’ve talked about. At the very least they’ll give you an idea of how folks have been reading Omeros and outline some of the prevalent critical approaches. These few essays, however, don’t represent the full range of scholarship on either the poem or Walcott’s oeuvre, let alone Caribbean poetry, or the possible subjects you might take on—but they will give you an idea of what’s possible. By all means, once you’ve refined your topic, take a few key words and search JSTOR and Project Muse. You’ll find a lot of material to help your thinking.
Your essay should be five to eight pages long (1,250 to 2,000 words), one-inch margins all around and double spaced (even if it’s not going to be printed). Please document all texts—primary and secondary—that are cited in the course of your discussion. That includes Omeros, for which you can cite page numbers parenthetically.
Walcott described writing Omeros as “spending a few hours each day having fun with language.” You should have fun doing this exercise as well. I know, I know. Who has time for fun?! Still . . .
