DRAMATIS PERSONAE
- MAKAK- (MONKEY) POOR, UGLY, OLD CHARCOAL BURNER
- CARPORAL LESTRADE- A MULATTO
- FELLOW PRISONERS
- TIGRE(TIGER)
- SOURIS (RAT)
- FRIEND OF MAKAK- MOUSTIQUE (MOSQUITO)
- BASIL- A CARPENTER, COFFIN MAKER(A symbol of death )
- A SINGER, A MALE CHORUS, TWO DRUMMERS
SOMETHING ABOUT DEREK WALCOTT
- A MULATTO FROM METERNAL AS WELL AS PATERNAL SIDE
- BORN IN CASTRIES, CAPITAL OF SMALL CARIBBEAN ISLAND, ST. LUCIA
- NOBEL LAUREATE FOR LITERATURE IN 1992
PLAY SUMMARY
This is the portentous and surrealistic dream around which the whole action of the play centers. Makak, an old hermit, has lived alone on Monkey Mountain his whole life. The dream he dreams one night forces him off the mountain and on a journey toward Africa.
How Makak will get from a small Caribbean island to Africa does not seem to trouble him in the least. With his only friend, Moustique, unwillingly accompanying him, Makak becomes a sort of faith healer.
When Moustique is killed in a marketplace riot, Makak is jailed and once he manages to escape with two other convicts, he only wants to go home to Monkey Mountain. The play represents Makak’s search for a home, but it is also about a native man being oppressed by colonial rule and the clash of West Indian and English culture. The play ends not with a beheading, “but with a man’s reaching an accommodation with his environment.
In spite of the violent, political overtones of the action, the resolution of the play is in personal, perhaps religious terms.” 4 Makak returns to his mountain retreat a new man because of his increased insight.
A DREAM- THE WHOLE SETTING
This play is a dream, one that exists not even so much in the given minds of its principal characters as in that of its writer, and as such, it is illogical, derivative, and contradictory.
DREAM WITHIN THE DREAM
— THE SOURCE OF DISILLUSIONMENT
— THE SOURCE OF NEW WISDOM AND ACCOMMODATION WITH PRESENT
— RECOGNIZE NOT ROMANTICIZE
BASIC MOTIFS
DIASPORA OF CARIBBEAN NEGROS
DENIAL OF SELF, SPACE AND POWER
