Unweaving the Social Fabric: An Aetiology of Epithelialization of the Wounded Self in Omeros

Analyzing the Wound

This research studies Derek Walcott’s most significant epic work Omeros using the framework of Critical Disability Studies. The character of Philocetes has a wound on his shin which is described by Walcott using rich imagery. Classical mythology uses various versions of the character of Philocetes. Sophocles wrote a play tilted, Philocetes. In Homer’s epic, Philocetes was a minor character. In Walcott’s work, this wound is allegorical. Even the plight of some other characters is discussed in the poem with reference to this wound. The wound thus becomes symbolic of suffering. According to some critics Walcott being a Post-colonial writer has used the imagery of wound as a national allegory. The plot that has been woven around this wound and the cultural and social implication involved in it is the subject of this research. It analyzes how literature responds to sickness and disability that creates binaries in the society and how does literary space give voice to the otherwise marginalized individuals. Garland-Thomson writes, “Disability—like gender—is a concept that pervades all aspects of culture: its structuring institutions, social identities, cultural practices, political positions, historical communities, and the shared human experience of embodiment” (24). According to this view, disability like an ideological construct pervades all facets of a society thus it becomes a shared human experience. This experience thus becomes a source of debate in medical humanities and in Critical Disability Studies, where the ultimate goal is to curate this experience to be more socially acceptable.

 

The epic opens unravelling the perpetual wound of Philocete:

 

“For some extra silver, under a sea-almond,

he shows them a scar made by a rusted anchor,

rolling one trouser-leg up with the rising moan

of a conch. It has puckered like the corolla

of a sea-urchin. He does not explain its cure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sea almonds grow on sandy shores. Their leaves and bark has medicinal properties to dress the wound and expedite its healing. That is why Philocete mentions it. Jahan Ramzani in his article, “The Wound of History” unfolds the manifold meanings of the wound. He says that it tells about the sufferings due to racial prejudice. He says that the wound trope dives into the “whirlpool of metaphorical resemblance and difference” (415). The symbol of wound does not only represent physical but also emotional, psychological and historical suffering here.

 

‘The rest walked up the sand with identical stride

except for foam-haired Philoctete. The sore on his shin

still unhealed, like a radiant anemone. It had come

from a scraping, rusted anchor. The pronged iron

peeled the skin in a backwash. He bent to the foam,

sprinkling it with a salt hiss. Soon he would run,

hobbling, to the useless shade of an almond,

with locked teeth, then wave them off from the shame

of his smell, and once more they would leave him alone” (9).

 

The verses quoted above mention the wound of Philocete he received that from a rusted anchor. It is unhealed since then. It is as fresh as a sea anemone. The imagery of vibrancy is used to connote the extent of pain that is associated with the wound. His pain is further highlighted with the limp that makes his disability visible to everyone around. With that there is an idea of shame due to the smellscape that accompanies the wound. It makes the position of Philocete socially awkward pushing him more and more to a secluded space.

 

“His skin was a nettle,

his head a market of ants; he heard the crabs groan

from arthritic pincers, he felt a mole-cricket drill

his sore to the bone. His knee was radiant iron, his chest was a sack of ice,

and behind the bars of his rusted teeth,

like a mongoose in a cage, a scream was mad to come out; his tongue tickled

its claws on the roof of his mouth, rattling its bars in rage” (4).

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Walcott uses creatural imagery to highlight his pain and irritation. It is not only the knee but the whole body responds to the pain. The suppressed agony and perpetual pain makes him enraged. Philocetes attributes his wound to his ancestry and compares it to the ‘Cross’ that he is carrying. The ‘cross’ being a Cristian symbol of sins of humanity that Jesus Christ took on his shoulders, Philocetes carries the burden of ancestral pains on his shoulders.

 

Or else why was there no cure?

That the cross he carried was not only the anchor's

but that of his race,

for a village black and poor as the pigs

that rooted in its burning garbage,

then were hooked on the anchors of the abattoir’ (19).

 

He believed the swelling came from the chained ankles of his grandfathers. The ‘chained ankles’ are a visual imagery of black slavery which was the product of colonization. This wound also bespeaks of the experience of the body being colonized by the wound. His psychological idea of wound that he is carrying through generations co relate with Philocete’s idea of wound in Sophocles play Philocetes. Both of them feel themselves to be ostracized from their respective context. Philocete inquires,

 

‘Where was this root? What senna, what tepid tisanes,

could clean the branched river of his corrupted blood,

whose sap was a wounded cedar's?

What did it mean, In this name that felt like fever?

Well, one good heft of his garden-cutlass

would slice the damned name clean from its rotting yam’ (20).

 

The verses quoted above inculcate the trauma one experiences in finding one’s origin and roots. Philocete’s pain thus aggrandizes to engulf historical realm. He questions the origin of black people. The wound is thus symbolic of the loss of history of black people as well who had crossed the Atlantic. Critics associate the experience of social segregation due to disability with the same lens as racial prejudice works. They theorize that, “something similar happens in critical theory—where, for example, Deaf/disability studies likens disability experiences to that of race, while race theorists describe their own oppression as disability. In each case, rather than interrogate the relationship, each group borrows the other’s oppressive associations in an attempt to explain its own oppression” (Erevelles and Kafer 217). Thus the boundaries of disability studies stretch to incorporate the proliferation of racial injustice in the society. William M. Jonson in his essay, “Normality, Ideology, and Inquiry into Human Life in the Thought of Georges Canguilhem” writes about the medical practice of Canguilhem who was a French historian, philosopher and physician and was trained between the two world wars. In discussing about various connotations of the word ‘normal’, he says that it is the continuity of life when it comes to individuals. His doctrine differs from that of an evolutionist. Interestingly he examines the metaphysical character of death and disease. Walcott also associates the sacred aspect of healing with the wound. “He would wait in the No Pain Cafe all day. There he would lean down and anoint the mouth of the sore on his shin” (18). Literature thus play its role in curating the pattern of suffering. By the time epic reaches its end, we move towards the healing process.