Instead presents them as absolutely human and just interested in doing their duty. Though he loses faith in the ship below, it stays a “spectre” on his conscience, haunted by the underworld he had seen. Instead of selling the conch’s and risking his profession in order to support himself and Helen, he releases them back into the ocean. Plunkett is left disturbed over the representation of Helen that she is not just a servant but a temptation that proves his history, thoughts, and conscience are false. Then he makes a commentary on the way the social construction of the town is currently. technological change. They are not rooted like plants, but part of the island itself—they are the foundation of it. and feels stalked since this reminds him of Helen. / It burst his father's lungs..... he'd paid some waxworks fellow / to draw flowers for battles, buds for a campaign....picking with his bill / from Agincourt to Zouave ( page 87). I not your slave!” but Helen is unaffected by this comment, sauntering off into the crowd while Achille is “feeling like a dog that is left/ to nose the scraps of her footsteps” (38). 3. future character collapse in the hands of lust and desire. http://spikesmusic.spike-jamie.com/irish/13/BENDEMEERS-STREAM.pdf, Anse La Raye: a small village in St. Lucia By trying to create this family history, Plunkett is trying to secure his place on the island, and reassure himself that he belongs there because (and though) he is the son of the colonizer. Gros Îlet: http://www.alacase.com/Photos/sbh/gros-ilet.jpg, Atavistic: Referring to a real or supposed evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations ago. A bell tower usually found in churches and in town squares or lighthouses, in this case the carillon is the church bells in the center of town. Of the inhabitants “Their past was as flat as a postcard, and their future,/ a brighter and flatter postcard…” (57) Only people who were tourists of that culture would be able to see it as a two-dimensional object. He is also becoming more isolated from Maud, “in the lamplit house which each horizontal gust/ blew farther from him.” (55) There are repeated images of Maud’s lilies, first as a symbol of forgotten pain, and then personified as choosing death by drowning. First, the relationship between Maud and Plunkett is seen as lonely. COVID update: Half Price Books has updated their hours and services. Troubled by why the battle took place, Plunkett questions if this is why "his countrymen died..For a lizard with an Aruac name?" Helen asks to borrow money because she says she is pregnant, and it is explained that while Helen is beautiful, she often turns her back on her friends, and as Maud agrees to loan her the money, Helen again turns her back and stares off to the sea. It’s important to note that in part 3 of this chapter, Maud’s reminiscence epitomizes the false pretenses empires tend to impose on Islands; expecting “fresh wreath of orchids” and “huge lily-pad plates”, rather then facing the reality of what they have done as colonizers of these places. This section is also filled with imagery hinting at the violence of the times of history remembered. signed at Versailles while Helen still represents the island of St. He says that a woman can do what she likes, but men are bound by their work. hints of the Major's obsession with Helen in that he decides the history of He soon “sigh(s) . However, he is also sad because he knows he has lost Helen, though he does not come to this realization until "he saw the swift flail and vanish in a trough" (125). “He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles of his grandfathers./ Or else why was there no cure?/ That the cross he carried was not only the anchor’s/ but that of his race” (19). These pamphlets and lists of "factual fiction" dismiss the emotional truth of the island's real history; they avoid the "repetitious details" which allude to a superstition that the Major himself cannot believe in. The buttons are not precious artifacts or relics, but instead the same as pieces of "domestic trash" put aside with the rest. This may be due to Plunkett's having been in a war and his mental wound as well. As the swift flies past, Achille is able to see the whole world reflected in its "the passing sorrow of its sleepless eye" (127). He feels that history has less to do with events and more to do with people. He was the grandson of Queen Victoria. The second section ends with Philoctete’s leg injury and he tries to be strong like a horse, which allows him to forget the pain and make his leg virtually weightless. Only after he has accepted that he cannot fight against the natural order - the will of the sea – does he become more in tune to its rhythms, until he finally “felt the swirl of fine sand”, which indicates he has gotten close to shore (51). Plunkett says to the man helping him, described metaphorically as a raven, then a crow, that there is no heir, “No heir: the end of the line. in this chapter, especially Part I, it took a while to figure out who was speaking. More information about Philoctete’s injury and his place in the community is provided, and now we know that he cannot join the other men as they set sail. Seven Seas wakes and sets his saucepan cooking. Now that the history the conquerors have always adhered to is in place, it is expected to continue to be adhered to, as this poem describes. The changes in the environment are also described as “Prognostications* of a grumbling sky that underlined each omen", which indicates both the impending omen of a bad storm, and the impending omens of the hardships that are to come (49). The sections has several images of wilting flowers, dying trees and hedges and even describes the grass on the lawn as "desiccated," (121). "History will be revised, and we'll be its villians, fading from the map." This is started by Helen’s claim to a pale lemon frock dress Maud had supposedly given her but forgot about. But it haunts him and he rises again not only to the surface of the sea but back to the world of the living and back to finding wealth in the world of the living by fishing (“once more the whelk was his coin, his bank the sea conch”). intensely yearned for object, for "the true bounty was Helen" (32). From there, the language shifts to more celestial, as Achilles watches the sky, comparing Helen to a comet. Part III: This section begins with a description of how time moves on this island. She then notes that Helen will "last forever," (125). Glossary: One certainly is inclined to think of the Plukett's as a long line of knights; and the line of a knight may not continue without a son. The gods are also conjured up in this section, and the villagers attribute the storm to the god's fete* in the sky and acknowledge their inability to prevent the natural fate of the stormy season: “In the grey vertical forest of the hurricane season, / when the dirty sea returns the wreaths of the dead, / all the village could do was listen to the gods in session” (52).The river begins to flood and flow back into the ocean, and as the storm begins to clear up “They saw the mess the gods made in one night alone, / as Lightning lifted his stilts over the last hill” (54). Association between Helen and the fireflies and stars would come out alludes to the blacks been. 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