A Jungian Reading of Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain

Most critics concur that Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain is a complex play, full of complicated, sometimes, contradictory images and metaphors. Kelly Baker Josephs findsdreams and delirium the psychological materials for decolonisation and shaping of a Caribbean community (2010, P.2). Similarly, Patrick Colm Hogan considers the play’sconstitution of colonial identity (2000, P.117). However, Robert Fox and Lloyd Brown,although taking different approaches, both underscore the play’s dream element and metaphoric dimension. Brown illustrates that the play is revolutionary and combines symbolism with fantasy. In spite of its Eurocentric style, Brown argues, Walcott’s play insists instead on the transcultural unity of black American and Caribbean experience. Foxin turn emphasises the mythological aspect of Walcott’s drama, arguing that Dream onMonkey Mountain goes beyond redeeming the downtrodden to dramatise the disparities between a consciousness that is creative and metaphoric, and one that is straightforward andimprisoning (1993, P.82). Despite their insightful interpretations, all about dreams, thesescholars have overlooked a significant aspect of psychoanalysis: the relationship between dreams and identity in the face of colonisation. An investigation into their relationship fromthe perspective of the Jungian psychology will deepen our understanding of the orchestratingfunction of the collective unconscious and, more important, Derek Walcott’s philosophical reflections on racial memory, dreams, and archetypes. This essay tends to assert that theidentity, thus destiny, of a (colonised) nation is shaped by their collective unconscious shared in the psychic inheritance of all members of the human family.

Keywords:

Archetype , Caribbean Identity , Collective Unconscious , Colonialism , Dream Play