How did Walcott incorporate classical mythology?
The classics can console, but not enough on their own. I turned to Homer, to Virgil, not as relics, but as mirrors. When I looked at the sea around us, I saw the same sea Odysseus navigated, the same storms that buffeted ancient mariners. The figures of Achilles and Hector, of Helen and Menelaus, became archetypes to illuminate the struggles of my own people, the betrayals and triumphs writ small on our shores. These old stories, when grafted onto the vibrant, often brutal, realities of the Caribbean—the history of slavery, of indentured labour, of independence fought for—gain a new resonance. They become not just tales from afar, but echoes of our own enduring humanity.
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