Walcott's "A Far Cry From Africa"

“I who am poisoned with the blood of both, where shall I turn, divided to the vein?”

Walcott’s poem is able to reflect the narrator’s uncertainty with his national and personal identity as he finds inexplicable violence and error on both his African and British Heritage. Starting with the history of how this violence came to be, the narrator feels uncertain and confused in how he should construct his identity with these two cultures. History, therefore, is a main factor for the narrator to confirm this identity; sadly the endless violence that has grown from his African homeland prevents him from fully accepting both cultures in a hybrid method.

The poem’s beginning comments on the ironic violence Africa creates based on the revolution with the British colonial settlers, as it brings destruction to the people of the colonies and to the nature they feel respect for.  This violence seems senseless and futile to a point leading the narrator to describe it as a “gorilla [that] wrestles with the superman.” He cannot find a way to obstruct this violence away from the heritage he has come to respect and identify himself with, leaving him in an ambiguous state. The poem is able to portray an environment where there is no distinction between these two cultures, but rather a violent result from their mixture as both sides have fought endlessly to keep their distance. Thus, the narrator of the poem wants to focus on that result and how the present should be regarded, not so much about the past, as it has left uncertainty and loss of identity for those who have bloodlines from both cultures. There is a sense of disappointment after the poem describes the violent history Africa has suffered since the beginning of colonization, making the narrator feel foolish in trying to identify himself with this history. Moreover, there is also a sense of helplessness when the narrator ends with the sentence “How can I turn from Africa and live?” which brings a message of how history has become useless in guiding the present and the future for these colonized people. 

This poem can represent a movement away from colonialism that focuses more on the effects and reactions the world has come to experience. Therefore, Africa should move away from trying to find an identity in this history to stop the cycle of the “delirious” violence found in it and find a new history that will lead new generations to find progress. In effect, the poem’s message can be taken as a warning from trying to use the past as a tool to form an identity and a home, for it seems that there is only chaos and violence that can augment the gap of these two cultures and never bring peace to future generations.