20 pages • 40 minutes read
Sabbaths, WI
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Symbols & Motifs
Flora and Fauna
Walcott uses environmental elements as symbols of life in the West Indies. These include a “lizard” (Line 12) that is indigenous to Saint Lucia, the Saint Lucian anole; “frigate birds” (Line 17), also called the magnificent frigatebird, which are native to the West Indies; herons; and crabs. In terms of plants, Walcott includes a variety of trees that are native to the West Indies, such as a “cocoa grove” (Line 8); “sea almonds” (Line 14), which are also called West Indian Almond Trees; and banana trees. Other examples of plant life include ferns and nettles. These specific animals and plants represent island life. Walcott highlights how humans make up only a fraction of the living things in the West Indies. For instance, he looks at where “one dog is sleeping” (Line 2) in the street before looking at the humans on the same street.
Colors
Walcott uses colors to represent sound, as well as to convey the characteristics of things. He uses what is called sound-color synesthesia in the phrase: “a bird whose cry sounds green and / yellow” (Lines 8-9). The speaker experiences the sound the bird makes as the colors yellow and green. This is an unusual kind of symbolism, where different sensory perceptions cross. The color yellow is also used as an adjective to describe sulfuric stones. Walcott paints a picture of both auditory and visual elements with colors.
The color white is repeated in the poem. There is a “white schooner” (Line 16), or ship, and sisters who are compared with “white moths” (Line 29). The boat, like the sulfur stones, has a colorful adjective in front of it. The simile with the moths uses the color white to symbolize the virginity of the nuns. Other colors that appear in the poem are ochre, orange, and blue.
Music
Walcott uses music to develop A Sense of Place. The banana leaves have human, sentient qualities; they “used to dance” (6) while they were alive and on the tree. They move as if inspired by music. There is also a bird who “has forgotten its flute” (Line 10). The specific type of bird is not named here; this omission is in line with the bird’s forgetting.
The speaker has forgotten the type of bird, but can recognize its song. Music and forgetting are also linked in Walcott’s description of rivers “that forgot the old music” (Line 13). Both the bird and the river have been involved with music in the past, but don’t recall it now.
After Line 13, the speaker focuses on old men. Both the forgotten music and the “dry old men” (Line 15) are aged. Walcott’s repetition emphasizes their similarity—they are from a lost era.
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By Derek Walcott
