Derek Walcott’s ‘Goats and Monkeys’

“Goats and Monkeys” by Derek Walcott

from “The Castaway and other Poems
(1965)”, is a dark poem that justifies a
black man in a world where everyone
looks down on him. This poem portrays
many notions of racism, sex, savagery
and jealousy. However, these notions
could not have been portrayed the best
they have been if Walcott did not build
its foundation upon Shakespeare’s
“Othello”. The poem centers on the
master-slave relationship. The theme is
somewhat similar to Danial Defoe’s
Robinson Crusoe and his Man Friday. It
is also symbolic of the rulers and the
ruled, with God as the omnipotent force
to be regarded with awe and reverence

Goats and Monkeys’ has obvious

references to Shakespeare’s Othello.
Walcott realizes that transgressing the
social norms is not possible, even after
hundreds of years have passed since
the play was enacted in Shakespeare’s
England. The thesis of the present day
Negro writers is still based on identity
and historicity. Walcott feels that
modern society has not changed
substantially to accept Othello as
Desdemona’s lover even today. The
poem begins with a quotation from
Othello where Lago warns Brabantio,
Senator of Venice, that he has been
betrayed as Othello, the Moor, is
making love to Brabantio’s fair and
beautiful daughter Desdemona. Othello
is called the black ram, who is “tupping
the white ewe” (Desdemona). It is a
bad omen that the heavy body of the
coloured brown Moor is descending over
Desdemona’s fair body like passing of
Earth’s shadow over the glowing silvery
moon during a lunar eclipse. But it is
tragic that in Act V, Scene II, the same
Othello, while bending over her lips, is
“charring” her “marble throat” by
suffocating her with her own pillow after
putting out the “light” he is carrying.
The innocence of Desdemona, the
sexual jealousy of Othello and the
racial, blood thirsty revenge of Lago
towards Othello were the perfect
symbols for Walcott to show his readers
what exactly was in his mind. Therefore
with the help of “Animal imagery”, he
makes a perfect combo to deliver a
powerful poem.

A detailed analysis-

The poem begins with images of chaos

engulfing the globe. It’s nighttime
(torches that belong to the time when
owls are out). And the torches are
guttering, that is they are flickering,
unsteady, unstable. Which is what
happens when a storm or strong wind is
about to come and upset everything.
There seems to be a scream rising in
the air (perhaps a shrieking wind) which
augurs/predicts terrible things. What is
this terrible thing that is shaking up the
world? The coming together/the love-
making of a black man with a young
white girl.
Earthen bulk: Othello’s dark brown
body

As he makes love to her, it looks like

her whiteness is like that of the moon
which is being covered like the moon
being covered by the earth’s shadow.
Smoky hand and marble throat. As if his
very touch is charring/burning her skin
black. This inter-racial relationship
evokes all kinds of derogatory
stereotypes of Africa and Africans. It
splits the people around them, the world
around them in doubts. Some might
approve, others have problems with
such a match.

Darkness descends as they make love,

the darkness is not just physical
darkness but also that of racist hatred,
of skepticism. Hatred and prejudice that
ll lead to the destruction of the
relationship itself (Put out the light is
what Othello says when he’s about to
kill her. So the darkness is both
welcomed for making love as well as the
final murder.) Once darkness descends
and they are about to make love, she
fantasizes about him. He is physically
huge and overwhelming like the night
itself. In her fantasy, through her love-
filled eyes, it is he who is like the moon
with lots of military medals. Like a
mythical creature about whom stories
are carved on stone.

In Greek mythology,

1.Pasiphae,an innocent girl, was cursed

and forced to experience lust for a bull
sent by Poseidon and eventually gave
birth to a monster, Minotaur, an
unnatural monster who has to dwell in
the labyrinth. Jealous reduces Othello
into a mean and repulsive monster who
kills Desdimona.

2. Eurydice, another mythical

reference in the poem, the wife of
Orpheus, while evading Aristaeus
was bitten by a snake and died.
Orpheus with the power of music
 moved the heart of the god of the
underworld and was allowed to take
his wife on condition not to look at
her until they reached the daylight.
Orpheus transgressed this and was
killed and reunited with her in the
underworld. This mythical reference
shows the plight of both Othello and
Desdemina who transgress the social
norms and reap the consequences.
The fair lady, Desdimona burns in
the hellish labyrinth of Othello’s mind
poisoned with jealous and eventually
is strangled to death. Walcott
compares her with Euridice who too
suffers in the underworld for no sin
of hers.
Even today such an inter racial
relationship, such a coupling
(immortalized by Shakespeare’s play)
produces dilemmas and doubts and
makes people uneasy, angry, and
divides them. There are prejudices
against such relationships that
stereotype the couples and especially
the black partner as ape or the angry
Moor.

He becomes the sacrificial beast of our

racist prejudices and hatred. We see
him as an animal, as a bull (since blacks
are often imagined as being without
restraint and bestial, uncivilized and
impulsive) easily provoked into anger,
screaming and snarling and not satisfied
till it has drawn blood—just as in this
case Othello’s jealous anger drives him
to kill Desdemona.

But, the poet says, whatever anger

circled his turbaned head (Othello
imagined as wearing an orange turban)
and his curved sword, it was not anger
that had anything to do with his racial
animalistic vengefulness. (The poet here
is urging the readers not to see
Othello’s anger, his jealousy, his final
revenge and killing as tied to his racial
identity, to the fact that he is a Moor/his
blackness). We should not imagine him
as a panther-like beast panting into her
chamber, sweating and smelling like an
animal.

What provoked his anger was his

imagining of her moon-like purity as
having changed. He imagines her as a
white fruit that had been squeezed and
spoilt. The fruit has ripened and become
sweeter but it has lost its initial purity.
His anger is provoked – like any man’s
could be—by thinking that the loss of
her purity is irretrievable. The loss is
absolute. That there is no doubt she is
no longer the girl he had married. That’s
what drives his anger, not the fact that
he is a “black” man responding to such
a situation.

Its that anger, that male anger and

jealousy that makes him behave in a
savage way and arrest the moon (shut
out the light of the moon). It is the kind
of reaction that the moon has seen
many jealous men have since time
began. It’s a jealous angry reaction not
unique to Othello. It is a reaction that
comes from the fact that he has been
often been away, pursuing his military
ambitions lusting after military glory (so
he knows he has been guilty of leaving
her alone while he pursued his
ambitions). But he only becomes angry
and vengeful, as she cries out for
forgiveness (even though she’s not
guilty of anything).

And even today, after all the centuries,

the moon looks down with its silver glow
at this kind of jealousy, looks at
lechery/sexual passion and the way
jealous anger can end a relationship in
disgrace. At how only killing/destruction
becomes the only solution to reading
corruption in a dreaming face. When we
choose to see the pain and anger of this
man mockingly as the reactions of a
typical black man—that he turns his
back on her, kills her for having loved
and chosen him just as the moon
chooses the night—his sorrow and
jealousy tied to a ridiculous
handkerchief.
The handkerchief’s important to Iago
and Desdemona derives from its
importance to Othello himself. He tells
Desdemona that it was woven by a 200-
year-old sibyl, or female prophet, using
silk from sacred worms and dye
extracted from the hearts of virgins.
Othello claims that his mother used it to
keep his father faithful to her, and so to
him the handkerchief represents marital
fidelity and trust.

CONTEXT OF THE POEM , THE POST

COLONIAL THEME & OTHELLO’S
REFERENCE

Derek Alton Walcott was born into a

world divided by colonialism. As a native
St. Lucian in the Caribbean islands, of
mixed racial parentage, his bloodline
flowed from Africa and Europe. Early
education through the British-based
educational system impressed on him
the Western canon of literature: Dante,
eighteenth- century English
metaphysicals, Eliot, Pound, Joyce,
Sahakespeare, Homer, and Virgil.

Walcott’s interpolation of personal

Caribbean experience throughout
everything he has ever written. Colonial
education in Western classics came to
Walcott in the tropical environment of
his St. Lucian birthplace. Looking about
his birthplace, the young Walcott
somehow came to realize that his
surroundings were eminently
remarkable despite their historically
marginal status. That which may be
disdained as local, parochial, ordinary,
provincial, or insular has at the same
time the virtue of being close, familiar,
and unexpectedly rich in potential.

The Caribbean region constitutes

perhaps the world’s most Extensive and
most varied site of creolization (mix of
languages and cultures) as a result of
the very different histories of
[enslavement and colonization) that
unfolded on each of those islands. The
inhabitants have come from Africa, Asia,
and Europe. As a consequence, many
languages are spoken. In addition, the
region presents a uniquely rich
assortment of creole or mixed-up
languages. These languages have
historical affinities with different
European languages (French, English,
Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese), they
have developed along different lines,
and they stand in quite different
relations to the languages of the
[enslavers and] colonizers still spoken in
the area.

As for the poem titled Goats and

Monkeys it’s a postcolonial revisiting of
Shakespeare’s revered tragedy Othello.
It’s a play about interracial love that
ends badly for the lovers as the black
hero Othello, becomes increasingly prey
to the poison poured into his ears by a
manipulative and evil Iago. Instead of
trusting his wife Desdemona, Othello
allows himself to be misled by Iago to
the point that he kills his young wife out
of jealous rage.

Walcott’s poem urges its readers not to

locate Othello’s impulsive,
uncontrollable rage in his ‘black’ identity
but rather see it as the foolish, jealous
behavior of an insecure husband. While
Iago uses a lot of racist stereotypes to
incite Othello’s insecurities as a black,
older husband, the poem urges us not
to fall prey to such stereotyping of black
characters like Othello. Once we see his
murderous rage not through the prism
of racial identity but through his identity
as an anxious, jealous husband being
manipulated by an arch-manipulator like
Iago, we can see him without feeling
any racist contempt for him/his actions.
Clearly the poem is asking us not to
allow racist stereotypes to colour our
attitudes and responses to the behavior
and actions of so-called blacks.

He gets Cassio drunk so that he

misbehaves and an angry Othello then
demotes him from his position. Iago
asks Desdemona to talk to Othello and
convince him to take Cassio back,
forgive him for his misbehavior. When
she starts talking to Othello about this
matter, Iago cunningly tells Othello that
Desdemona is actually in love with the
young Cassio. That she thinks she has
made a mistake in marrying Othello.
Co-incidentally, Desdemona one day
also drops a handkerchief which Othello
had gifted to her as a love-token. Iago
gets his hands on it and he gives it to
Othello saying that he has seen Cassio
use it to wipe his mouth. Iago keeps at
it. Keeps poisoning Othello’s ears,
igniting his jealousy, his insecurity till
Othello is prepared to kill Desdemona
who he thinks is unfaithful. Othello kills
Desdemona in a fit of jealous rage late
in the night.

SEXUAL AND RACIAL POLITICS IN

WALCOTT’S ‘GOATS & MONKEYS’
(IDENTITY CRISIS)
Walcott’s poem ‘Goats & Monkeys’ is his
tribute to Shakespeare and the
language that he has weaned on. He
explores the identity crisis a man faces
who is black in skin and white in mind.
To do this he uses the character of
Othello and traces his relationship with
Desdemona to highlight the stark
contrast and the serise of ‘other’ that
Othello faces.

The poem critiques the society that is

still not ready to accept a black Othello
as a white Desdemona’s lover and the
poet realizes that transgressing the rigid
social norms is as impossible as
transgressing divine laws. Animal
images engulf the poem with the man
repeatedly presented in the role of the
“beast’. Walcott plays with the contrasts
of color in his smoky hand’ and ‘her
charred… marble throat’. Othello
represents all of Africa/ the other which
is both enticing and repulsive, that must
remain alien, for the social law “halves
the world.
Walcott employs racial stereotypes in
his poem in drawing analogy between
whiteness of Desdemona & fight and on
the other hand comparing Othello with
the dark ominous night. But Walcott
also alludes to the fact that Othello
might be bestial or savage, not because
of his race alone, but because of the
sexual angst that he suffers from, being
a ‘black man who feels insecure,
uncertain of ‘white love”. Walcott
attacks the social stereotyping practiced
by the white Venetian society that
honours Othello’s military valour but
cannot accept him as a suitor/ husband
of a white woman. The ‘native’ must
know his place and if he dares to
transgress then he must become the
victim of the “hellish labyrinth of his
mind”.

Desdemona who hardly emerges from a

symbol shares the fate which has
befallen women perceived in male
created art. The white woman is a
common symbol in modern Black
Literature. She frequently becomes a
‘bloodletting to release the black hero
from the agony of attraction to White
culture & power, a sacrificial figure and
a cause of savage mutilation of the
black man himself. The white woman
easily. Becomes the arena for the
working out of the black man’s racial/
cultural identity, or a target for hostility
that is not released on the white man.
In other words she functions as the
‘sexual political symbol. The desire of
the male artist is contradictory wherein
he wants the woman to be chaste yet
voluptuous, pure yet passionate. “She
thus becomes the symbolic
manifestation of the combination of the
contradictory sexual & racial attitudes of
a man.

The woman symbolizes the white

culture and power that causes Othello to
see he as an ape, a horned beast
alluding to the fear of succumbing to
cuckoldry). Othello universalizes the
male sexual anxiety, although his sexual
angst is primarily dependent on his
racial position. Othello is then the
barbarous one, an uncivilized savage.
Othello’s suffering is intensified for he
kills what he loves most. The black
moor is victimized twice. First he is the
victim of a society that can accept his
prowess in war but not his presence as
sultor-husband to a white lady.
Secondly, this prejudice breeds in the
General a jealousy and lack of faith
emphasized by his own insecurity and
the lack of courage in his own
convictions.

Walcott on one hand is sympathetic

towards Desdemona and Othello, but on
the other there is a sense of
repugnance. The reference to the
‘handkerchief’, which becomes a mobile
symbol to determine a woman’s
chastity, describes how a woman’s
integrity can be judged on flimsy
grounds. A mere fragile evidence acts
as a catalyst to cause the downfall of
the star crossed lovers, and heightens
the fact that man cannot undo what fate
decrees. Othello both serves the
Venetian society as a General, as well
as rebels against the same society by
crossing interracial boundaries all for
the desire of a white woman. Othello
thus becomes both the insider as well as
the outside. He is victimized not just by
the society, but also even by his own
self. His is the dilemma of a black man
trying to both assimilate and maintain
his identity in a white society. Walcott in
revisiting Shakespeare’s play
interrogates the racial and social
stereotype. The poem instead puts the
onus of the woman’s fate on her
passivity, lacking cognizance of reality.
Thus the racial and social angst of a
poet black in skin, white in mind
seeking recognition in a white world,
takes recourse in his succumbing to
gender stereotyping.