Crusoe's Journal

“Its shape an earthen, water-bearing vessel’s/ whose sprinkling alters us into good Fridays who recite His praise,/ parroting our master’s/ style and voice, we make his language ours,/ converted cannibals/ we learn with him to eat the flesh of Christ”

                These above lines are from the poem Crusoe’s Journal by Derek Walcott.  The poem is a response to the novel 'Robinson Crusoe' written by Daniel Defoe. Which is written as an autobiography with an underlying message that one could create the British system of rule anywhere in the world.  The overarching theme in this poem is one of the colonizers colonizing.  This is seen by the dichotomy developed with the use of the words ‘his’ ‘ours’ ‘parroting’ ‘alters’ and ‘converted’. When the poet says ‘we make his language ours’ it alludes to the fact that colonizers made the natives adopt a subservient role by making them take up English as a language.   When Walcott talks about altering them into ‘good Fridays’ he is talking about the natives becoming subservient, who’ recite His praise’ which could also mean that the natives were converted. 'Friday' was also a character in the novel who is turned into a slave by Crusoe himself, furthering the colonizing theme. Another example to back up the religious connotations is that when Walcott says good Friday, he could also mean ‘Good Friday.’ Which is a religious holiday that takes place during the end of Lent, a liturgical season we just entered.  Additionally, Walcott uses the word converted, which obviously has religious connotations.  Calling them cannibals the colonizers take them and teach them to eat the body of Christ instead, moving them into a new symbolic sort of cannibalism.