The Schooner Flight Reflection

A recurring theme through the Schooner Flight is crisis of identity. It is best embedded in Walcott’s description of Shabine as having “Dutch, nigger, and English in me, and either I’m nobody, or I’m a nation.” Genetic and national altercations embody the post-colonial society of Walcott’s Caribbean. Recurring imagery such as, “young men without flags using shirts, their chests waiting for holes,” and, “I had no nation now but the imagination. After the white man, the niggers didn’t want me,” further emphasize the narrator’s struggle with identity and the core message of Walcott’s poem; a journey of self-discovery isn’t about discovering oneself, but the realization that regardless of race or gender we as a people are capable of establishing a greater connection. Overall it is important to note the prevailing importance of this theme as it provides a narrative device to send Shabine on his journey. Contrast of identity also shapes the landscape of the poem, with instances of man vs nature and the moral compass that nationality and race provide for a man. Walcott also chose wisely to reflect this change on the prose with which he writes. He begins the poem almost traditionally before engulfing the reader with references to Caribbean land, sea, and dialect. Most importantly, and perhaps as the greatest instance of this theme, is Shabine reaching the conclusion that by not belonging to a defined nation or race he belongs to a grander commute of social outcasts. Because it shapes the main character and his actions, I believe crisis of identity is one of the poem’s most important themes. 

Bbliography 

Walcott, Derek. “The Schooner Flight.” Famous Poets and Poems, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2012. 

Bootstraps

                In Villanueva’s “Bootstraps”, the author relates his own experience to better understand divergent writing styles per culture and heritage. In his attempts to improve both his rhetoric and his GPA, Villanueva stumbles upon a study detailing the differences in writing between monolinguals and bilinguals; prior to this discovery, he engaged in Professorial Discourse Analysis, a procedure that involved reading any published works by his professor for the sake of establishing the easiest method of communication.

                In his studies, Villanueva found the English monolinguals place a grater emphasis on idea and logic with little regards to creative flourishes while writing. Spanish-speakers and other bilinguals embellish subsequent sentences to reinforce an idea and create a more abstract prose; their sentences are longer and more prone to interaction with the reader. The differences in writing doesn’t just stem from a cultural upbringing, there is a possibility that RNA strands have as much of an effect on the linguistic development of an individual.

                All this serves for the primary purpose of identifying the author’s own struggles as an English writer. Not only does he have to adapt to the mentality of American professors, but he has overcome his own deficiencies in the foreign language. A proposed method for this is for him to write in a more logical manner, meaning he has to make more analytical connections between his sentences and suppress the more literary conventions of his writing. 

                While I agree that writing on a collegiate environment serves a more educational purpose than entertaining, each person’s unique prose helps prevent monotony. It’s important to understand the basic principles of rhetoric without sacrificing the individuality of a person’s writing. In my opinion its worse to fail by your standard’s than to succeed by everyone else’s. Perhaps reaching some sort of compromise between the two would improve a person’s writing. Nonetheless it was a useful article that will help a numerous quantity of people find themselves as writers.