The Almond Trees

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1985

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Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Related Poems

“The Armadillo” by Elizabeth Bishop (1957)

Bishop, whose poetry Walcott admired, here records a raucous street festival in Brazil in which fire balloons and fireworks are set off and the terror such explosions have on animals and birds. Like “The Almond Trees,” the poem uses that landscape-moment to make a social/political statement, in this case anti-war and the catastrophic impact war has on not only the natural world but on people who are terrorized by the destruction as well.

“The Unknown Citizen” by W. H. Auden (1939)

Poetry speaks to its political, cultural, and social moment. As a major influence on Walcott’s perception of the public role of the poet, here Auden uses the poem as a plaque inscription supposedly for a fictitious monument like the tombs of the unknown soldiers. Auden takes a stinging satiric look at the complacency of people who too-freely surrender their identity to the facelessness of a depersonalized industrial culture.

“Ruins of a Great House” by Derek Walcott (1953)

Using the metaphor of a grand house in ruins, Walcott, in this poem completed in the same period as “The Almond Trees,” suggests the spiraling decline of the British Empire itself that had for centuries so corrupted the Caribbean culture. The poem explores Walcott’s abhorrence over the British involvement with African slaves to establish its economic superiority.

Further Literary Resources

“Derek Walcott’s ‘The Almond Trees’” by Sun Yucong (2017)

This reading of the poem examines particularly Walcott’s argument that the Caribbean needs to embrace its “bastardy culture.” The reality of the Caribbean’s cross-cultural identity in the postcolonial era is stressed in the poem by the juxtaposition of the sunbathers and the indigenous trees sharing the same beach.

“The Exile and the Prodigal: Derek Walcott as West Indian Poet” by D. S. Izevbaye (1980)

Published at the time when Walcott was emerging as the preeminent voice of post-colonial Caribbean literature, the analysis explores the unique relationship between Walcott as a writer committed to capturing the beauty, the culture, and the integrity of Caribbean culture but also committed to expressing that identity through the poetic models, prosody, and formal conventions of European verse.

“Creative Ecologies: Derek Walcott’s Postcolonial Ecopoetics” by Emma Trott (2013)

The article explores Walcott’s complex love/hate relationship with European culture and his deep-seated commitment to his Caribbean identity using his artistic eye for the breathtaking landscapes of his West Indian home. Using “the Almond Trees,” among others, the article finds Walcott expressing that emotional embrace of his native islands through the vehicle of the poetics of cultures that had for centuries exploited that land.