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Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays
On a Caribbean island, the morning after a full moon, Felix Hobain tears through the market in a drunken rage. Taken away to sober up in jail, all that night he is gripped by the impoverished hermit believes he has become a healer, walking from village to village, tending to the sick, waiting for a sign from God. In this dream, his one companion, Moustique, wants to exploit his power. Moustique decides to impersonate a prophet himself, ignoring a coffin-maker who warns him he will die and enraging the people of the island. Hobain, half-awake in his desolate jail cell, terrorized by the specter of his friend's corruption, clings to his visionary quest. He will try to transform himself; to heal Moustique, his jailer, and his jail-mates; and to be a leader for his people. Dream on Monkey Mountain was awarded the 1971 Obie Award for a Distinguished Foreign Play when it was first presented in New York, and Edith Oliver, writing in The New Yorker, called it "a masterpiece."Three of Derek's Walcott's most popular short plays are also included in this Ti-Jean and His Brothers; Malcochon, or The Six in the Rain; and The Sea at Dauphin. In an expansive introductory essay, "What the Twilight Says," the playwright explains his founding of the seminal dramatic company where these works were first performed, the Trinidad Theatre Workshop.First published in 1970, Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays is an essential part of Walcott's vast and important body of work.
340 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1970
25 people are currently reading
533 people want to read
About the author
Derek Walcott
183 books504 followersDerek Walcott was a Caribbean poet, playwright, writer and visual artist. Born in Castries, St. Lucia, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 "for a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment."
His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He was best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey around the Caribbean and beyond to the American West and London.
Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remained active with its Board of Directors until his death. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981. In 2004, Walcott was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award, and had retired from teaching poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University by 2007. He continued to give readings and lectures throughout the world after retiring. He divided his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City.
His work, which developed independently of the schools of magic realism emerging in both South America and Europe at around the time of his birth, is intensely related to the symbolism of myth and its relationship to culture. He was best known for his epic poem Omeros, a reworking of Homeric story and tradition into a journey around the Caribbean and beyond to the American West and London.
Walcott founded the Trinidad Theatre Workshop in 1959, which has produced his plays (and others) since that time, and remained active with its Board of Directors until his death. He also founded Boston Playwrights' Theatre at Boston University in 1981. In 2004, Walcott was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award, and had retired from teaching poetry and drama in the Creative Writing Department at Boston University by 2007. He continued to give readings and lectures throughout the world after retiring. He divided his time between his home in the Caribbean and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
April 10, 2021
Such an incredible, complex, terrifying and stunning play on the politics of Blackness, colonialism, peace and violence, and much more. Wow.
October 20, 2023
A Surreal story of an Afro-Caribbean man grappling with his identity and a deep sense of inferiority complex in a post-colonial world caused by the gradual removal of his indigenous cultural structures. The play seems like a literal and lyrical demonstration of Frantz Fanon’s ideas in The Wretched of the Earth as Makak, the hero with the name of a monkey, describes himself as ugly and old repeatedly in face of colonial appropriation. With him is his friend Moustique, described as an insect and a fly as he feels insignificant in a world where, colonialism or no colonialism, poor will be destined to remain poor. No revolution has ever included them, or at least the structures that are founded once revolutions are achieved, have had no place for the poor. His only grace can be treachery and he dies emulating the corrupt manners of the rich (he comes alive again as the play ends). The play is a dream sequence of a person whose unconscious and the conscious has long been determined by colonial discourse where he is always the binary opposite of the white counterpart and therefore also weak, fickle, laze, old and ugly
April 16, 2020
"Who's there? The moon, the moon, the pock-marked moon alone, the syphilitic crone."
August 4, 2022
I regrettably didn’t grow up knowing about Derek Walcott until recently. The St. Lucian poet passed away in 2017 and since then, I made a point to read a little more about him and his work. When I heard of Dream on Monkey Mountain and Other Plays, I knew I wanted to get my hands on a physical copy so that I can immerse myself into his writing. This book features four plays and an overture at the beginning called What the Twilight Says which serves as an introduction.
The four plays featured here are: The Sea at Dauphin, ti-Jean and His Brothers, Malcochon, or The Six in the Rain, and Dream on Monkey Mountain. Each play is lyrical and engrossing reminiscent to the Ancient Greek greats. There is a lot of inspiration from Ancient Greek writers and stories from Eurydice to Dionysian-themed plays of that time. Derek Walcott was a master wordsmith with a talent for displaying strong, powerful emotions and capturing the intense beauty of the Caribbean.
While at times difficult to understand, I allowed myself to be swept away by Walcott’s poetry and the passion of the characters in his plays. One day, I would like to read his epic Omeros because I was impressed with these plays so much. I don’t have much to say about this honestly. I am just happy that I was able to discover a new writer to learn about despite the scandals. It was nice to read more Caribbean literature and I look forward to reading more from Walcott in the future.
The four plays featured here are: The Sea at Dauphin, ti-Jean and His Brothers, Malcochon, or The Six in the Rain, and Dream on Monkey Mountain. Each play is lyrical and engrossing reminiscent to the Ancient Greek greats. There is a lot of inspiration from Ancient Greek writers and stories from Eurydice to Dionysian-themed plays of that time. Derek Walcott was a master wordsmith with a talent for displaying strong, powerful emotions and capturing the intense beauty of the Caribbean.
While at times difficult to understand, I allowed myself to be swept away by Walcott’s poetry and the passion of the characters in his plays. One day, I would like to read his epic Omeros because I was impressed with these plays so much. I don’t have much to say about this honestly. I am just happy that I was able to discover a new writer to learn about despite the scandals. It was nice to read more Caribbean literature and I look forward to reading more from Walcott in the future.
December 22, 2021
A sharpish little read of the Crucifixion or Christlikeness. It scans quickly - the pace is appreciated though I do have mixed feelings about the very last scene. 3.5?
I suppose there's an issue here for me in that Walcott appears very Nietschean here - drawing from his accounts of the Crucifixion in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. I would dismiss this if it weren't for his surprisingly accurate reading of the doctrine of the Eternal Return (not, as it is popularly misconstrued, an endless repetition of one's life - we have a little more philosophical sophistication xoxo).
I think the moon-character is a really rich source of interpretation and I enjoy that even if it's not entirely coherent, or perhaps Because it's not entirely coherent.
yes it's... odd to see him on the syllabus. I don't regret the time with the play. It's enjoyable as an experience, putting aside the problematic final scene.
I suppose there's an issue here for me in that Walcott appears very Nietschean here - drawing from his accounts of the Crucifixion in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ. I would dismiss this if it weren't for his surprisingly accurate reading of the doctrine of the Eternal Return (not, as it is popularly misconstrued, an endless repetition of one's life - we have a little more philosophical sophistication xoxo).
I think the moon-character is a really rich source of interpretation and I enjoy that even if it's not entirely coherent, or perhaps Because it's not entirely coherent.
yes it's... odd to see him on the syllabus. I don't regret the time with the play. It's enjoyable as an experience, putting aside the problematic final scene.
Read
August 6, 2019I... don't get it. I don't get the writing or the characters and I read it for a dumb class where the prof doesn't explain stuff and I was sick on the day that this book was presented on so I super don't get it.
July 20, 2017
Where are the black Mamet’s? Where are those Americans? Is that the multifaceted, multi racial drama of today?”
Derek Walcott, Evergreen Review, 1990.
Although Derek Walcott fills Dream on Monkey Mountain with more than enough ghosts and symbols, an uninvited one hangs over it’s every word. A protest play layered beneath references to myth and culture, It’s usage of interracial sexual violence as a vehicle for heroic triumph chains it to the psychodrama’s that poisoned African American theater in the late 60’s/early 70’s. Though more “literary” than Amiri Baraka’s and Ed Bullins’ blood-revenge epics, his usage of aesthetics(to swaddle his mythic killer in the clothing of black victim hood) makes the word seem perverse. Both slack and deeply pretentious, Mountain is an immense failure, reverberating all the more given his status as a brilliant poet.
The scouting report on Walcott’s plays is that, while well written, they suffer because of his refusal to create a character other than himself. Structurally, Mountain does nothing to dispel that notion. Walcott’s strength as a poet is, to paraphrase Conrad, “making you see” his version of the Caribbean, his grasp of his environment, his understanding of its history in relation to the world; and his
his vast, deeply learned command of the English language in doing so. In the theater, that style has done him few favors, as even his best plays (Henry Christophe ) have been plagued by his inability to let go of his persona.
In Mountain, the political aspects of his persona are a great deal of what he’s selling. Starting with the 36-page preface, assured, yet full of bombast, a sideswipe to Tennessee Williams, Walcott attempts to distinguish his story by making his hero/killer a cerebral, sophisticated figure. Unlike the horror core intellectuals of Baraka’s the slave, or the gruesome predators that populate Bullins’ screeds; Makak, the central character, is a trickster, a learned assured man smarted than both the black and the white people on the West Indian Island. Through the fill in the blank narrative populated so many black nationalist plays(Black man in jail? Check! Black man has no faults or weakness? Check. Symbolic Uncle Tom figure? Check! Black man triumphs over oppression? Check. White woman gets fucked up in the process? Check.) Walcott references Don Quixote, The underground man, and several Greek and African gods. Also, in another veiled cheap shot to Williams, Mountain is a dream play; but here the dreams (of Makak’s liberation from oppression) are bloody, cocksure, and triumphant, having nothing to do with the interior agonies of character or the subconscious.
What Mountain is most known for is it’s most symbolic act of all (if one wants to call it that): when Makak achieves his full freedom from racial oppression by…chopping off the head of his jailers white wife. Defenders such as Walcott’s biographer Bruce King will say Makak isn’t murdering a living woman but a mythic image; as at the end of the play, Makak transforms into a magical African trickster god and the jailers wife, who he titles “an apparition”, a moon goddess of white beauty (described here by the Jailer himself).
CORPORAL:
She is the wife of the Devil, that white witch. She is the mirror of the moon that this ape look into and find himself unbearable. She is all that is pure, all that he cannot reach…She is lime, snow, marble, moonlight, lilies, cloud, fame and bleaching cream, the mother of civilization and the co-founder of blackness…It is you that created her, so kill her! Kill her! The law has spoken!
The problem with that theory, ( outside of the obvious obscenity of the act) is that Walcott’s deigning of transformation is central to the murder, on the account that it is divorcing her from being a human being. Worse than that, in his reduction, she just doesn’t become one woman, but a “spirit” with the potential to be every woman that ever existed. The horror shown here, no matter the mytho-poetic form that encapsulates it, is one of the darkest moments in African American arts in letters.
Contrary to Walcott’s opinion, Mountain is part of African American arts and letters, if only to serve as an example of his warped view of it. For though Walcott has decried any commonality of experience with African American writers; in his plays he carries their banner in the most rote, cliched terms. Never does he hold his makeshift flag more than he does in Mountain, where his characters sing like black nationalists, throw pity parties like black nationalists, plot revenge like black nationalists, and in the end win like black nationalists, like Makak’s ( Jesus Christ, the symbolism of the name) final monologue to his two felon friends.
MAKAK:
"God bless you both. Lord, I have washed from shore to shore, as a tree in the ocean. The branches of my fingers the roots of my feet, could grip nothing, but now, god they have found ground….other men will come, other prophets will come, and they will be stoned, and mocked, and betrayed, but now this old hermit is going back home, back to the beginning, the green beginning of this world"
An interesting question, full of thorny subtext’s for the playwright and academia, needs to be asked: Just what did Makak/ Walcott win? Riding a wave of white guilt, Mountain had a 48 show run on Broadway, but outside of what people call “the literary canon”, has it lasted? Walcott has raged about the standards of African American literature and political correctness, but how can you see this and so many of his other plays( The Last Carnival, Viva Detroit, soft core versions of Mountain. The Capeman, a vile defense of a cold blooded killer) as examples of the term at it’s most generic? Most pointedly, if African American culture is the haven for anti-intellectualism Walcott says it is, then why didn’t the said culture come to see this bloody, brutal play by the thousands?
The questions regarding the culture that Dream On Monkey Mountain inadvertently ask take precedence to it’s sheer cruelty, it’s distance from humanity, creation, reason, or any of the characteristics one considers when they think of art. For although he attempts to distinguish himself from protest drama, his plays shows a tangled, brutal brotherhood with the genre and it’s history. Though in different ways-Baraka and Bullins, by cursing the African American history of the past, Walcott, by cursing the history altogether-they have divorced themselves from the standards and rituals black people have used to survive in America; resulting in works of art that have existed from a violent, ahistorical swamp. This, not racism, reverse racism, or low standards, is the reason Black Nationalist theater has failed as an idea, the reason Walcott is a failure as a playwright, and the reason that Mountain is one of the greatest obscenities the “canon” has flung upon the general public.
Derek Walcott, Evergreen Review, 1990.
Although Derek Walcott fills Dream on Monkey Mountain with more than enough ghosts and symbols, an uninvited one hangs over it’s every word. A protest play layered beneath references to myth and culture, It’s usage of interracial sexual violence as a vehicle for heroic triumph chains it to the psychodrama’s that poisoned African American theater in the late 60’s/early 70’s. Though more “literary” than Amiri Baraka’s and Ed Bullins’ blood-revenge epics, his usage of aesthetics(to swaddle his mythic killer in the clothing of black victim hood) makes the word seem perverse. Both slack and deeply pretentious, Mountain is an immense failure, reverberating all the more given his status as a brilliant poet.
The scouting report on Walcott’s plays is that, while well written, they suffer because of his refusal to create a character other than himself. Structurally, Mountain does nothing to dispel that notion. Walcott’s strength as a poet is, to paraphrase Conrad, “making you see” his version of the Caribbean, his grasp of his environment, his understanding of its history in relation to the world; and his
his vast, deeply learned command of the English language in doing so. In the theater, that style has done him few favors, as even his best plays (Henry Christophe ) have been plagued by his inability to let go of his persona.
In Mountain, the political aspects of his persona are a great deal of what he’s selling. Starting with the 36-page preface, assured, yet full of bombast, a sideswipe to Tennessee Williams, Walcott attempts to distinguish his story by making his hero/killer a cerebral, sophisticated figure. Unlike the horror core intellectuals of Baraka’s the slave, or the gruesome predators that populate Bullins’ screeds; Makak, the central character, is a trickster, a learned assured man smarted than both the black and the white people on the West Indian Island. Through the fill in the blank narrative populated so many black nationalist plays(Black man in jail? Check! Black man has no faults or weakness? Check. Symbolic Uncle Tom figure? Check! Black man triumphs over oppression? Check. White woman gets fucked up in the process? Check.) Walcott references Don Quixote, The underground man, and several Greek and African gods. Also, in another veiled cheap shot to Williams, Mountain is a dream play; but here the dreams (of Makak’s liberation from oppression) are bloody, cocksure, and triumphant, having nothing to do with the interior agonies of character or the subconscious.
What Mountain is most known for is it’s most symbolic act of all (if one wants to call it that): when Makak achieves his full freedom from racial oppression by…chopping off the head of his jailers white wife. Defenders such as Walcott’s biographer Bruce King will say Makak isn’t murdering a living woman but a mythic image; as at the end of the play, Makak transforms into a magical African trickster god and the jailers wife, who he titles “an apparition”, a moon goddess of white beauty (described here by the Jailer himself).
CORPORAL:
She is the wife of the Devil, that white witch. She is the mirror of the moon that this ape look into and find himself unbearable. She is all that is pure, all that he cannot reach…She is lime, snow, marble, moonlight, lilies, cloud, fame and bleaching cream, the mother of civilization and the co-founder of blackness…It is you that created her, so kill her! Kill her! The law has spoken!
The problem with that theory, ( outside of the obvious obscenity of the act) is that Walcott’s deigning of transformation is central to the murder, on the account that it is divorcing her from being a human being. Worse than that, in his reduction, she just doesn’t become one woman, but a “spirit” with the potential to be every woman that ever existed. The horror shown here, no matter the mytho-poetic form that encapsulates it, is one of the darkest moments in African American arts in letters.
Contrary to Walcott’s opinion, Mountain is part of African American arts and letters, if only to serve as an example of his warped view of it. For though Walcott has decried any commonality of experience with African American writers; in his plays he carries their banner in the most rote, cliched terms. Never does he hold his makeshift flag more than he does in Mountain, where his characters sing like black nationalists, throw pity parties like black nationalists, plot revenge like black nationalists, and in the end win like black nationalists, like Makak’s ( Jesus Christ, the symbolism of the name) final monologue to his two felon friends.
MAKAK:
"God bless you both. Lord, I have washed from shore to shore, as a tree in the ocean. The branches of my fingers the roots of my feet, could grip nothing, but now, god they have found ground….other men will come, other prophets will come, and they will be stoned, and mocked, and betrayed, but now this old hermit is going back home, back to the beginning, the green beginning of this world"
An interesting question, full of thorny subtext’s for the playwright and academia, needs to be asked: Just what did Makak/ Walcott win? Riding a wave of white guilt, Mountain had a 48 show run on Broadway, but outside of what people call “the literary canon”, has it lasted? Walcott has raged about the standards of African American literature and political correctness, but how can you see this and so many of his other plays( The Last Carnival, Viva Detroit, soft core versions of Mountain. The Capeman, a vile defense of a cold blooded killer) as examples of the term at it’s most generic? Most pointedly, if African American culture is the haven for anti-intellectualism Walcott says it is, then why didn’t the said culture come to see this bloody, brutal play by the thousands?
The questions regarding the culture that Dream On Monkey Mountain inadvertently ask take precedence to it’s sheer cruelty, it’s distance from humanity, creation, reason, or any of the characteristics one considers when they think of art. For although he attempts to distinguish himself from protest drama, his plays shows a tangled, brutal brotherhood with the genre and it’s history. Though in different ways-Baraka and Bullins, by cursing the African American history of the past, Walcott, by cursing the history altogether-they have divorced themselves from the standards and rituals black people have used to survive in America; resulting in works of art that have existed from a violent, ahistorical swamp. This, not racism, reverse racism, or low standards, is the reason Black Nationalist theater has failed as an idea, the reason Walcott is a failure as a playwright, and the reason that Mountain is one of the greatest obscenities the “canon” has flung upon the general public.
December 3, 2025
written by a nobel laureate caribbean writer born in st lucia, 1930-2017
Dereck Walcott was a playwright, poet, and an artist by profession
wrote many poems such as
omeros
sea grapes etc.
one of his major works include
'Dream on monkey mountain n other plays'
where he published one of the most successful plays 'Dream on a monkey mountain'
which was first staged at
The central library, Toronto in the year- 1967
and he got it published in the year-1970
in the collection ' Dream on monkey mountain and other plays'
and for this play he fetched The Obie award in the same year
further he won a noble prize in literature in the year 1992.
major themes of his writings echo the post colonial dreams n desires of alienation, fractured identity, dream to go back to roots, illusion vs reality which was all mentioned in his play as well.
the play is divided into 2 sections of 3 scenes each adjoined by a prologue n and epilogue with epigraphs influenced from fanon's 'wretched of the earth'
Major characters include
1. makak(Felix Hobain)
2. moustique(best friend of makak)
3.tigre(felon)
4.souris(felon)
5. basil(death)
6.corporal lestrade(mullato)
7. brethillia(donkey)
8. Josephius(man saved by makak)
Dereck Walcott was a playwright, poet, and an artist by profession
wrote many poems such as
omeros
sea grapes etc.
one of his major works include
'Dream on monkey mountain n other plays'
where he published one of the most successful plays 'Dream on a monkey mountain'
which was first staged at
The central library, Toronto in the year- 1967
and he got it published in the year-1970
in the collection ' Dream on monkey mountain and other plays'
and for this play he fetched The Obie award in the same year
further he won a noble prize in literature in the year 1992.
major themes of his writings echo the post colonial dreams n desires of alienation, fractured identity, dream to go back to roots, illusion vs reality which was all mentioned in his play as well.
the play is divided into 2 sections of 3 scenes each adjoined by a prologue n and epilogue with epigraphs influenced from fanon's 'wretched of the earth'
Major characters include
1. makak(Felix Hobain)
2. moustique(best friend of makak)
3.tigre(felon)
4.souris(felon)
5. basil(death)
6.corporal lestrade(mullato)
7. brethillia(donkey)
8. Josephius(man saved by makak)
March 18, 2024
Maybe I’d appreciate this more if I read some literary responses to this, but I don’t think I should have to do that to enjoy a work.
Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott is a black play published in 1970 and primarily follows a mentally unstable man known as Makak of Monkey Mountain as he goes on a “quest” to reach Africa. I am fully aware that this is a horrible synopsis of the play, but to be fair, the line between reality and the dream is intentionally a bit blurry. This play says some thought-provoking things about religion, the law, and racism that are wrapped up in a story reminiscent of a folk tale. I get that the shock value of some of the statements in this play is intentional; however, I thought this went a bit overboard at times. Simply put, I was not a fan.
Dream on Monkey Mountain by Derek Walcott is a black play published in 1970 and primarily follows a mentally unstable man known as Makak of Monkey Mountain as he goes on a “quest” to reach Africa. I am fully aware that this is a horrible synopsis of the play, but to be fair, the line between reality and the dream is intentionally a bit blurry. This play says some thought-provoking things about religion, the law, and racism that are wrapped up in a story reminiscent of a folk tale. I get that the shock value of some of the statements in this play is intentional; however, I thought this went a bit overboard at times. Simply put, I was not a fan.
September 23, 2022
Nobel Prize 🏆 in Literature 1992.
Four plays and an "Overture" by Derek Walcott.
Overture: a pretty incomprehensible piece of prose that did nothing for me (*).
The Sea at Dauphin: felt like the first act of something bigger, but it was just over after 40 pages.(**).
Ti-Jean and His Brothers: an excellent humourous play in which the devil is deceived by the youngest of three brothers (*****).
Malcochon, or Six in the Rain: I only counted five characters in the rain and had no idea what the plot or point of this play was (**).
Dream on Monkey Mountain: the longest of the four plays and interesting in how it depicts a dream. Not sure what the message was, feally, but interesting (****).
Four plays and an "Overture" by Derek Walcott.
Overture: a pretty incomprehensible piece of prose that did nothing for me (*).
The Sea at Dauphin: felt like the first act of something bigger, but it was just over after 40 pages.(**).
Ti-Jean and His Brothers: an excellent humourous play in which the devil is deceived by the youngest of three brothers (*****).
Malcochon, or Six in the Rain: I only counted five characters in the rain and had no idea what the plot or point of this play was (**).
Dream on Monkey Mountain: the longest of the four plays and interesting in how it depicts a dream. Not sure what the message was, feally, but interesting (****).
January 11, 2020
I read this book because I was about to visit the island of St Lucia for the first time, and wanted to hear some of its most prominent voices prior to landing. The plays and dreams bring out the very deep and long lasting impact of slavery. But they were written around the time the islands achieved independence. It seems to me that the Caribbean people are among the happiest and most content that I have encountered, despite living in relative poverty, so hopefully those inherited mental scars are healing. The pitons on St Lucia are certainly a very inspiring and romantic place to visit!
November 10, 2021
This play is a twisting journey through the dream of a mad man who is desperately attempting to reconcile reality with his desire for a more impactful life. The story is touching, if a bit confusing, and I would love to see it staged one day. I do feel that the narrative would play much better on stage than in written form as there were several moments when the emotion was lost because the text was not being performed.
October 5, 2021
A great collection, his writing is so complex, beautifully written, lyrical and timeless. Even though it was written in 1967 it is still relevant to the issues of our time including colonial oppression, colorism and the clash between Caribbean and British culture
October 10, 2021
An engaging journey through time and space.
A book I saw Kahil Gibran going into it and Mutabaruka coming out of it.
Having seen snippets of the play adds a world of colour to the read.
A book I saw Kahil Gibran going into it and Mutabaruka coming out of it.
Having seen snippets of the play adds a world of colour to the read.
March 20, 2023
Never has a man's drunken night out given me a diasporic existential crisis like Makak's did to me.
All I know now is, 1) I need to see this play performed and 2) I need to read some Franz f*cking Fanon
All I know now is, 1) I need to see this play performed and 2) I need to read some Franz f*cking Fanon
July 24, 2017
The title play remains powerful and fantastic!
July 15, 2018
A very interesting book with its complex symbolism and peculiar, mysterious characters. It gives you a post-colonial picture of the Caribbean culture. It definitely holds significance as such.
December 23, 2021
There’s only one reason why this is on my English course
March 28, 2023
I have only read Dream on Monkey Mountain and it was not a favourite of mine.
April 21, 2024
a fascinating exploration of colonialism, identity, and culture. it is a complex play which at times scares you, excites you, and inspires you.
Read
September 29, 2024#confused
September 15, 2017
The Sea at Dauphin…not for me.
Ti-Jean and His Brothers is a very good play. It has comedy, tragedy, music, poetry…it provides a full effect that transports the audience to the Caribbean. In the play, the Devil, who is a planter, interacts with three brothers. There are all kinds of interesting statements and small poems.
“Woman life is so. Watching and losing.” (102)
“Who is the man who can speak to the strong?
Where is the fool who can talk to the wise?
Men who are dead now have learnt this long,
Bitter is wisdom that fails when it tries.” (108)
“Who with the Devil tries to play fair,
weaves the net of his own despair.
Oh, smile; what’s a house between drunkards?” (156)
The deal they make with the devil has tragic consequences.
Malcochon, or The Six in the Rain…not for me.
Dream on Monkey Mountain
There are items I like about this play, and items I severely dislike. I wish I could have seen it live. This is a play about revolution and protest, violence, interracial violence, class warfare, and the myths underpinning interracial violence. The statements are brutal and affecting. “Let them run ahead. Then I’ll have good reason for shooting them down. Sharpeville? Attempting to escape. Attempting to escape from the prison of their lives. That’s the most dangerous crime. It brings about revolution. So, off we go, lads!” (287) Unfortunately, the resolution is just not something I would support. Freedom is achieved through racial violence, with a woman getting her head chopped off. This is supposed to be freedom by the murder of the myth…unfortunately the literal reading of the play is quite different, and I’m not sure the nuance is really appreciated by many readers. Not good.
See my other reviews here!
Ti-Jean and His Brothers is a very good play. It has comedy, tragedy, music, poetry…it provides a full effect that transports the audience to the Caribbean. In the play, the Devil, who is a planter, interacts with three brothers. There are all kinds of interesting statements and small poems.
“Woman life is so. Watching and losing.” (102)
“Who is the man who can speak to the strong?
Where is the fool who can talk to the wise?
Men who are dead now have learnt this long,
Bitter is wisdom that fails when it tries.” (108)
“Who with the Devil tries to play fair,
weaves the net of his own despair.
Oh, smile; what’s a house between drunkards?” (156)
The deal they make with the devil has tragic consequences.
Malcochon, or The Six in the Rain…not for me.
Dream on Monkey Mountain
There are items I like about this play, and items I severely dislike. I wish I could have seen it live. This is a play about revolution and protest, violence, interracial violence, class warfare, and the myths underpinning interracial violence. The statements are brutal and affecting. “Let them run ahead. Then I’ll have good reason for shooting them down. Sharpeville? Attempting to escape. Attempting to escape from the prison of their lives. That’s the most dangerous crime. It brings about revolution. So, off we go, lads!” (287) Unfortunately, the resolution is just not something I would support. Freedom is achieved through racial violence, with a woman getting her head chopped off. This is supposed to be freedom by the murder of the myth…unfortunately the literal reading of the play is quite different, and I’m not sure the nuance is really appreciated by many readers. Not good.
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April 20, 2023
“so much for the past. consider the present.”
February 21, 2014
*Disclaimer: I didn't actually read this book, I read The Sea at Dauphin in the Norton Anthology of Drama, and it apparently has never been published separately*
The play is alright. I can definitely see the influences of Synge's Riders to the Sea, both in the similarities and the divergences, but I wasn't crazy about Synge's play either. I'm not exactly sure what didn't work for me in both/either play, they just didn't appeal to my aesthetic, I suppose. I know this isn't a very helpful review, but there you go.
The play is alright. I can definitely see the influences of Synge's Riders to the Sea, both in the similarities and the divergences, but I wasn't crazy about Synge's play either. I'm not exactly sure what didn't work for me in both/either play, they just didn't appeal to my aesthetic, I suppose. I know this isn't a very helpful review, but there you go.
March 27, 2021
Another serendipitous find -- one of several books left on a bookshelf by the former owner of our current house, along with a slim volume of Walcott's poetry. I'd not known of Walcott before this, don't ordinarily read plays, but was intrigued by the dust jacket description and, tucked inside the cover, two clippings: a 1990 review from the International Herald Tribune and his 2017 obituary from The Economist. Curiosity piqued, I dove in. Well worth the effort.
June 3, 2014
Ti-Jean and it was brother was a really interesting play, almost like folk tale.
Dream on Monkey was a metaphorical beast. After two weeks studying it in my Derek Walcott World Writers class Fall 2013 @ Utah State university I feel like I was barely started to grasp even some of the possible interpretations. Naturally, that's when we had to move on. I would like to see this play someday.
6/10
Dream on Monkey was a metaphorical beast. After two weeks studying it in my Derek Walcott World Writers class Fall 2013 @ Utah State university I feel like I was barely started to grasp even some of the possible interpretations. Naturally, that's when we had to move on. I would like to see this play someday.
6/10
December 14, 2016
Only read the last play, "Dream On Monkey Mountain", in this collection. Was very sleepy when I read it, but this was another illuminating Caribbean text. I'm actually curious to read more from him, his poetry in particular, having read one and finding it interesting ("The Sea is History" and "Laventille").
November 2, 2012
Very lovely, primal, and well as lyrical and active plays. The Title play, Dream of Monkey Mountain was amazing. Walcott is talented poet and play write well deserving of his Noble Prize in literature, get to know him.
January 15, 2014
Fun read. Incredible plays that seam to deal with modern problems, yet when you read them they feel as if they have been told for hundreds of years. Thoroughly enjoyed them and will keep my eyes open for any chance to see a live production.
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