Derek Walcott’s Dream on Monkey Mountain: A Multifaceted Phantasmagorical Narrative

Abstract

When identifying different strands of criticism on Derek Walcott’s play, Dream on Monkey Mountain (1970), one is pleasantly surprised by the scope of theoretical approaches towards his dramatic work. Almost every critical school of literary theory can be found in the writings on Walcott’s play. This diversity in form is paralleled by an even greater variety of content, making it all but impossible to tag Walcott’s drama with a single label. Most critics concur that Dream on Monkey Mountain is a complex play, full of complicated, sometimes, contradictory images and metaphors. Dangling between dreams and reality, Walcott’s play, according to the author of this paper, is a multifaceted narrative. Focusing only on the concept of “dream”, the present article, appreciating and reflecting some of the significant relevant interpretations (all about dreams), tends to add that the identity, thus destiny, of a (colonised) nation is shaped also by their collective unconscious shared in the psychic inheritance of all members of the human family.