Number 22 July 2000
Theatre of the Castaway:
Derek Walcott's Methods in "Rewriting"
Robinson Crusoe
David Ford
Derek Walcott's play Pantomime has as its central pillar the relationship between Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday. Understanding why Walcott rewrites Defoe's novel involves examining the principles of the postcolonial rewrite as well as the establishment of Robinson Crusoe as a piece of "classic" literature. Although the play falls under the general category of the rewrite, its dramatic form allows for the classic master/slave model to be tooled and retooled so many times that the play is free to flow between interpretations of the story, rather than holding to a single one. The performative nature of the play also leads the audience to realize that acting forms a significant part of postcolonial life. Walcott has stated that he feels Crusoe performs roles himself, those of Adam, God, and missionary. By exploring these roles in relation to Pantomime, one can understand why Walcott uses Robinson Crusoe, from his West Indian perspective, and consider whether he uses the text fairly.
The rewrite is the most obvious example of postcolonial authors "writing back" to the imperial centre. Since the culture and education of these writers was dominated by imperial rule, their first tendencies were toward imitating the literature they had learned. "The writers of my generation," writes Walcott, "were natural assimilators. We knew the literature of Empires, Greek, Roman, British, through their essential classics" ("Muse" 4). The next move was toward "writing back," reacting against those European literary standards, even after Britain's global power was decimated (Ashcroft 3-7). The most direct form of this is the "rewrite," wherein the writer directly reworks a literary "classic," or an element thereof, to create a new text. An example would be Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, which explores the life of Bertha, Rochester's West Indian wife in Jane Eyre. Gilbert and Tompkins in Post Colonial Drama write that:
given the legacy of a colonialist education which perpetuates, through literature, very specific socio-cultural values in the guise of universal truth, it is not surprising that a prominent endeavour among colonized writer/artists has been to rework the European "classics" in order to invest them with more local relevance and to divest them of their assumed authority/authenticity. (16)
Walcott chooses Robinson Crusoe as the centre of his rewrite. Understanding why Walcott uses the Defoe text as a model begins by acknowledging the importance and power that the novel holds. John Moore writes that before the publication of Robinson Crusoe "there was no English novel worth the name and no book (except the Bible) as widely accepted among all classes of English readers" (55). Martin Green elaborates on the book's popularity in saying that:
of all the stories of the British Empire, the most widely read, not only across the Empire, but across Europe, was that of Robinson Crusoe. Indeed it seems demonstrable that the Robinson story has been one of the most widely read in the whole world. In the National Union Catalog, fifty-four pages are given to listing different editions of Defoe's book, whereas only four go to perhaps the most famous literary novel of the nineteenth century, Middlemarch, and another four to the most famous eighteenth-century novel, Clarissa. (35)
For a rather simple story of a man forced to use his ingenuity to survive after being shipwrecked on a deserted island, the text has held popularity for an extremely long time. For so long, in fact, that it should be argued as Frank Ellis does that "Robinson Crusoe has become a myth of great potency and wide application" ("Preface"3). Even well into the twentieth century the novel was still appreciated around the world. James Joyce has said "whoever rereads this simple, moving book in the light of subsequent history cannot help but fall under its prophetic spell" (Ellis 15). It is little wonder, then, that Walcott feels that the Crusoe-Friday relationship is popular and important enough to write about, or against. In his poem "Crusoe's Journal," Walcott states that Robinson Crusoe was "our first book, our profane Genesis" (11). He feels that the power of the text, and its often-assumed legacy as the first novel, has had so much influence that it became an accepted prototype for the foundations of West Indian culture. Gilbert and Tompkins also point out that Walcott is not alone in working with Robinson Crusoe, and that along with Shakespeare's The Tempest, Defoe's work has been "a focal point in the project of 'writing back' to the imperial centre" (36). The power that the relationship between Crusoe and Friday holds creates an archetype, which prompts Walcott to rewrite this text.
His rewriting efforts produce Pantomime, which is set on the Caribbean Island of Tobago, often thought of as the original setting for Robinson Crusoe (Gilbert 36). Walcott presents a washed-up British actor turned hotel owner named Harry Trewe and his Trinidadian servant Jackson Phillip. The only idea Harry has for entertaining the hypothetical guests of his low budget retreat is a pantomime of Robinson Crusoe. He asks Jackson to play Friday to his Crusoe, as we might expect. Things become interesting when Harry suggests reversing their roles for the purposes of comedy. As Jackson warms to the idea, the results start to turn away from the comedic and Harry seems to be out of his element, his suggestion becoming slightly more than he is able to accept. Through the course of quick dialogue exchanges and the exhibition of their individual acting talent, the men switch roles numerous times. By the play's conclusion, Jackson and Harry have gained a closer relationship by exploring their differences.
Walcott's choice of the medium of theatre for the reenactment of the Crusoe-Friday model allows him to place the characters in the roles in a way that is obviously staged. The Crusoe pantomime functions as a play within the play. The facets of the master/slave relationship can be explored under the pretense of acting. At the same time, even though Harry and Jackson are acting, at the hotel they are in the master/servant positions. Walcott reminds the audience that the life of the colonized is always an act. "We already had the theatre of our lives," he states, and quotes from V.S.Naipaul: "The only escape was drama" ("Twilight" 4). Harry Trewe lives his life as a play, as if he imagines himself following a script: "I'd no idea I'd wind up in this ironic position of giving orders, but if the new script I've been given says: HARRY TREWE, HOTEL MANAGER, then I'm going to play Harry Trewe, Hotel Manager, to the hilt, dammit. So sit down!" (Pantomime 108). This implies that the colonizer's domination over the colonized has always been an act. By the same token, Pantomime shows the colonized servitude as imitation as well. "You mispronounce words on purpose, don't you Jackson?" says Harry, "Don't think for one second that I'm not up on your game Jackson. You're playing the stage nigger with me" (140). Walcott makes abundantly clear, as the two actors tackle the Crusoe story from their own angles, that they both understand that their own relationship is based on this model, and that it is also obvious artifice.
Interestingly, Walcott sees Crusoe as a kind of actor as well, an actor that tackles many roles. In a lecture entitled "The Figure of Crusoe" he explains his views on the various facets of Robinson Crusoe's character:
My Crusoe, then, is Adam, Christopher Columbus, God, a missionary, a beachcomber, and his interpreter, Daniel Defoe. He is Adam because he is the first inhabitant of a second paradise. He is Columbus because he has discovered this new world, by accident, by fatality. He is God because he teaches himself to control his creation, he rules the world he has made, and also, because he is to Friday, a white concept of Godhead. He is a missionary because he instructs Friday in the uses of religion . . . . He is a beachcomber because I have imagined him as one of those figures of adolescent literature, some derelict out of Conrad or Stevenson . . . and finally, he is also Daniel Defoe, because the journal of Crusoe, which is Defoe's journal, is written in prose, not in poetry, and our literature, the pioneers of our public literature have expressed themselves in prose. (Quoted in Hamner 81)
These Crusoe roles, predominantly those of Adam, Godhead and Missionary, can be seen in Pantomime. By exploring how Harry and Jackson deal with these ideas, Walcott's treatment of Robinson Crusoe as a colonial figure can be best understood.
By resetting the Crusoe story temporally but not geographically, Walcott allows his characters to be, like Adam, "the first inhabitant[s] of a second paradise." In an area where tourist day-cruises are still billed as "Crusoe's Dream" (Gilbert 36), it is ironic that Harry's shabby hotel should be the new paradise of this rewrite. The effect that tourism usually has of exploiting natural beauty can be seen as another form of role-playing which is exemplified by Harry's attempts at entertainment for his future guests.
Beyond an ironic take on island paradise, the idea of Crusoe as Adam is seen most in Pantomime through the concept of naming. One remembers in Robinson Crusoe how the castaway, like Adam in Eden, has the power of naming that which surrounds him. The best example is probably the naming of his famous slave: "I made him know his name should be Friday, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time" (Defoe 201). Crusoe does not attempt to learn Friday's true name, or even try an anglicized version thereof; he simply forces a new name upon him. In Pantomime, Jackson takes this control and emphasizes it in their reversal by calling the white savage "Thursday" (Pantomime 114). He then strides around the set renaming all the objects so as to teach the savage white man his language:
(slams table)
Patamba!
(rattles beach chair)
Backaraka! Backaraka!
(Holds up cup, points with other hand)
Banda!
(Drops cup)
Banda Karan!
(Puts his arm around Harry; points at him)
Subu!
(Faster, pointing)
Masz!
(Stamping the floor)
Zohgoooor!
(Rests his snoring head on his closed palms)
Oma! Omaaaa!
(Kneels,looking skyward. Pauses; eyes closed)
Boora! Boora!
(Meaning the world. Silence. He rises) (116)
Harry quickly puts an end to Jackson's naming scheme, reminding the audience that all is artifice. "You never called anything by the same name twice," he says, asking "What's a table?" (117) Jackson's only response is "I forget" (117). This allows Harry to bring everything into perspective by stating "I'll tell you one thing, friend. If you want me to learn your language, you'd better have a gun" (117). Perhaps naïvely, Harry has outlined the power of force that the colonizer holds over the colonized. The power of the firearm is evident in Robinson Crusoe as well:
I presented my piece, shot and killed one of the kids. The poor creature, who had at a distance, indeed, seen me kill the savage, his enemy, but did not know or could not imagine how it was done, was sensibly surprised, trembled and shook, and looked so amazed that I thought he would have sunk down. He did not see the kid I had shot at, or perceive I had killed it, but ripped up his waistcoat to feel if he was not wounded, and, as I found presently, thought I was resolved to kill him; for he came and kneeled down to me and, embracing my knees, said a great many things I did not understand; but I could easily see that the meaning was to pray me not to kill him. (205)
Thus, through threat of violence, and a life debt of sorts, Friday enters into a life of servitude. Crusoe tells how Friday makes "all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me as long as he lived" (200). Here, Crusoe falls into the role of God or Godhead, as Walcott explained. Friday is at Crusoe's side for the rest of his life. Walcott works with this idea in Pantomime with the image of shadows, which is presented by Jackson with brutal honesty:
For three hundred years I served you. Three hundred years I served you breakfast in . . . in my white jacket on a white veranda, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib . . . in that sun that never set on your empire I was your shadow, I did what you did, boss, bwana, effendi, bacra, sahib . . . that was my pantomime. Every movement you made your shadow copied . . . and you smiled at me as a child does smile at his shadow's helpless obedience . . .But after a while the child does get frighten of the shadow he make. He say to himself, that is too much obedience, I better hads stop. But the shadow don't stop, no matter if the child stop playing that pantomime, and the shadow does follow the child everywhere; when he praying, the shadow pray too, when he turn round frighten, the shadow turn round too, when he hide under the sheet, the shadow hiding too. He cannot get rid of it, no matter what, and that is the power and black magic of the shadow . . . until it is the shadow that start dominating the child, it is the servant that start dominating the master . . . and that is the victory of the shadow, boss. And that is why all them Pakistani and West Indians in England, all them immigrant Fridays driving all you so crazy. And they go keep driving you cry till you go mad. In that sun that never set, they's your shadow, you can't shake them off. (112-13)
The shadow is an effective image because it invokes darkness and an imprisoning attachment. Jackson's referral to the "sun that never sets" changes that metaphor from indicating the reach of the Empire to suggesting that there is no rest from the shadow.
Jackson prophesies that the man will come to fear his shadow, that the social roles will be turned around, just as they are reversed in their pantomime. Harry romantically holds to his notion of Crusoe as the lonely colonizer with such lines as "O silent sea, O wondrous sunset that I've gazed on ten thousand times, who will rescue me from this complete desolation?" (142). Jackson's song, on the other hand, ends with "But one day things bound to go in reverse, /With Crusoe the slave and Friday the boss" (117). The way in which Jackson and Harry interpret the situation indicates their feelings toward the colonial position. Harry projects upon Crusoe the stereotypical view of the colonizer; despite the natural beauty surrounding him he only pines for his homeland. Jackson gives to Friday feelings of social revolution and aspiration. Walcott expertly allows the audience to understand his characters' positions by watching the way that they act the roles.
The third way in which Crusoe dominates Friday is through religion, as a missionary. Crusoe's main concern is to convert Friday from cannibalism to Christianity. The idea of cannibalism awakens "so much abhorrence at the very thought of it, and at the least appearance of it" (Defoe 202), that Crusoe feels he must convert this savage who seems genteel in every other way. Crusoe begins by asking Friday of his practices, but when he attempts to describe the religion of his people, Crusoe dismisses the ideas immediately: "I endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Friday, and told him that the pretence of their old men going up the mountains to say O to their god Benamuckee was a cheat" (211). Crusoe cannot accept any religion besides his own, especially not one observed by "brutish and barbarous savages" (211).
Harry Trewe turns out to have the same problem as Crusoe. He is playing along with his idea of reversing the roles of Crusoe and Friday, but when the improvisation reaches the topic of religion he suddenly cannot process the idea anymore:
He comes across this naked white cannibal called Thursday, you know. And then look at what would happen. He would have to start to . . . well, he'd have to, sorry . . . This cannibal, who is Christian, would have to start unlearning Christianity. He would have to be taught . . . I mean . . . he'd have to be taught by this - - African . . . that everything was wrong, that what he was doing . . . I mean, for nearly two thousand years . . . was wrong. That his civilization, his culture, his whatever, was . . . horrible. Was all . . . wrong. Barbarous, I mean, you know. And Crusoe would then have to teach him things like, you know, about . . . Africa, his gods, and so on . . . and it would get very, very complicated, and I suppose ultimately it would be very boring, and what we would have on our hands would be . . . would be a play and not a little pantomime. (Pantomime 126)
Harry's broken speech shows the difficulty he is having in comprehending the entire scope of his reversal concept. What he does accomplish is demonstrating that the biases he denies having are actually there beneath the surface. He has, of course, stated exactly what the British Empire has done to the people of many of its colonies. Although, in most cases, the colonizer usually upsets much more than just two thousand years of organized religion. The dash, and tangible pause, before Harry spits out the word "African" shows that he still falls into the colonizer pattern and believes himself superior.
Jackson is offended by Harry's pretentiousness, but is not obvious in his disdain. Instead, to make explicit Harry's misconceptions he calls on that same European revulsion of cannibalism that Crusoe feels:
Jackson: Supposing I wasn't a waiter, and instead of breakfast I was serving you communion, this Sunday morning on this tropical island, and I turn to you, Friday, to teach you my faith, and I tell you, kneel down and eat this man. Well, kneel, nuh! What you think you would say, eh? (pause) You, this white savage?Harry: No, that's cannibalism. (126)
Jackson maneuvers Harry into labeling his own religion with that which he abhors. Eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Christ in the communion ceremony, on the literal level, is not far from cannibalism. By using this example Jackson reminds us that most religions seem strange when taken out of context, and no one should ever be judged for their beliefs.
Walcott makes a strong statement when Jackson states, "This moment that we are acting here is the history of imperialism" (125). Harry and Jackson act out the story of Crusoe and Friday because it represents all colonialism, the domination of master over slave. However, the relationship between Crusoe and Friday is not as easily placed in a binary as it might seem initially. Walcott chooses to ignore elements of Crusoe's personality that do not fit the stereotype of the colonizer. Although Crusoe does consider Friday his servant, he also develops a respect for him that goes beyond the usual idea of the master/slave relationship:
This frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleased God, in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hands, to take from so great a part of the world of His creatures the best uses to which their faculties and the powers of their souls are adapted; yet that He has bestowed upon them the same powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the capacities of doing good and receiving good that He has given to us; and that when He pleases to offer to them occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay, more ready to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed than we are. (Defoe 204)
Crusoe goes against almost any colonial perspective in saying that these lower races are morally more capable of good then the Europeans. Crusoe even speaks out against colonialism, especially that of "the Spaniards, whose cruelties in America had been spread over the whole countries and were remembered by all nations from father to son" (210). Crusoe fits the figure of the European creating his own existence and converting the natural inhabitants to his ways, but because Walcott needs the castaway as an archetype, he has chosen to ignore those aspects of Crusoe which do not fit this model.
Although neither Harry nor Jackson portrays these elements of acceptance in Crusoe, compromise forms the essence of what Walcott believes to be the eventual solution to the divisions between colonizer and colonized. From the outset Harry has automatically assumed the position of director of the pantomime production. He sees his methods as correct, and disapproves of Jackson's Calypso-Trinidadian acting styles. As Gilbert and Tompkins point out, "It is only when Trewe accepts Phillip's art as valid and relinquishes the directorial role that he assumes, will the two be able to act together with integrity" (38). In the end, Harry and Jackson are working to reconcile their styles and create a new hybrid that combines elements of both. Walcott's suggestion is that reconciliation lies in recognizing their differences and working from there.
Pantomime uses Robinson Crusoe to bring Harry and Jackson to the realization of their differences. The roles Walcott sees Crusoe holding as Adam, Godhead and Missionary are all reflected in Pantomime, and used by both Harry and Jackson in their portrayals. Acting and reversing the Crusoe and Friday roles allow the audience to see the true natures of the actors themselves, and the prejudices they hold. These biases are based on the binary of the master/slave relationship, thus Walcott conveniently leaves out anything expressed by Crusoe that sets him outside his stereotyped role as colonial master. Nevertheless, it is understood that to advance the action of the play to its conclusion, Robinson Crusoe must be seen as the original imperialist. In this respect, public opinion works in Walcott's favor since most readers thinking back on the Robinson Crusoe story probably would not remember any of the castaway's non-imperial leanings. Walcott's treatment of Robinson Crusoe, therefore, is effective in developing the relationship between Harry and Jackson, the new actors in the postcolonial world. They begin as Crusoe and Friday, and end, not with a perfect relationship, but with the start of new identities for both of them.
WORKS CITED
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Gilbert, Helen, and Joanne Tompkins. Post-Colonial Drama: Theory, Practice, Politics. New York: Routledge, 1996.
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Moore, John Robert. "Robinson Crusoe." Ellis, 55-61.
Walcott, Derek. "Crusoe's Journal." Collected Poems 1948-1984. Toronto: Harper-Collins, 1990. 92-4.
---. "Pantomime." Remembrance & Pantomime: Two Plays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980. 90-170.
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---. "What the Twilight Says: An Overture." Dream on Monkey Mountain. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1970. 3-40.