Religion in the First Stanza of Walcott's “Crusoe’s Journal” -- Post-Colonialism

The first stanza of Derek Walcott’s “Crusoe’s Journal” has a good deal of ties to religion. The speaker seems to suggest that this notion of Christianity has been pushed on his culture by missionaries. “Christofer” in line 16 alludes to Christopher Columbus, who, in many ways, can be credited for the spread of Christianity through his discovery of the Americas. Columbus’s discovery led to colonization of the new lands. With the colonies came many missionaries looking to convert the people, or “savages” as Walcott calls them, into Christians. This idea that the natives adopt the culture, religion, and language of the missionaries by means of “parroting”, or copying without much thought involved, suggests that colonization brings about a change in the culture by rejecting the previous religious ideas, language, and beliefs of the land. Perhaps the most interesting lines are the final two of the first stanza: “converted cannibals/ we learn with him to eat the flesh of Christ” (24/25). For me, there are two ways to read these lines. One way assumes that the villagers have been converted from cannibalism, but still are “eat the flesh of Christ” though the Eucharist. Another was to read it is that the villagers have been converted to cannibalism through eating the sacrament. Both readings allow us to utilize post-colonial theory when looking at this poem.