In his latest volume of poems, The Prodigal, Derek Walcott employs the prodigal son as his dominant metaphor for the experiences of a speaker much like himself who has spent a good part of his later years away from his homeland of St Lucia. The speaker does tell of his wanderings away from home particularly in the US and Europe and as such is true to the biblical prodigal son’s straying from home. A crucial aspect of the prodigal’s story, however, is the warm welcome he receives on returning home. This welcome is missing from Walcott’s volume. No poems show anyone celebrating his return with a fatted calf. Walcott has admitted that he tends to overuse metaphors and has to remind himself that pebbles are at times simple pebbles. In this (supposedly his last) volume of poems, is the prodigal metaphor fitting?
I propose to examine the appropriateness the prodigal metaphor for the experiences of a poet who is seen as one who stayed at home in the Caribbean while many of his contemporaries found vocational fulfillment away from home. V.S. Naipaul has portrayed Derek Walcott as being a prisoner of his Afro-Caribbean community, preoccupied with championing their cause. There is a clear implication here that Walcott (and other postcolonial writers) can be hostages of their ethnic or national constituencies. Does the one-sided application of prodigal metaphor underscore an obligation to his homeland that hobbles Walcott’s freedom as man and artist?