Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott
-OTHELLO
Shriek, augury! His earthen bulk
Buries her bosom in its slow eclipse.
His smoky hand has charred
That marble throat. Bent to her lips,
He is Africa, a vast sidling shadow
That halves your world with doubt.
"Put out the light", and God’s light is put out.
Of him as huge as night, as bodiless,
As starred with medals, like the moon
A fable of blind stone.
Dazzled by that bull’s bulk against the sun
Of Cyprus, couldn’t she have known
Like Pasiphaë, poor girl, she’d breed horned monsters?
That like Eurydice, her flesh a flare
Travelling the hellish labyrinth of his mind
His soul would swallow hers?
Her white flesh rhymes with night, she climbs, secure.
Virgin and ape, maid and malevolent Moor,
Their immortal coupling still halves our world.
He is your sacrificial beast, bellowing, goaded,
A black bull snarled in ribbons of its blood.
And yet, whatever fury girded
On that saffron-sunset turban, moon-shaped sword
Was not his racial, panther-black revenge
Pulsing her chamber with raw musk, its sweat,
But horror of the moon’s change,
Of the corruption of an absolute,
Like a white fruit
Pulped ripe by fondling but doubly sweet.
And so he barbarously arraigns the moon
For all she has beheld since time began,
For his own night-long lechery, ambition,
While barren innocence whimpers for pardon.
And it is still the moon, she silvers love,
Limns lechery, and stares at our disgrace.
Only annihilation can resolve
The pure corruption in her dreaming face.
A bestial, comic agony. We harden
With mockery at this blackamoor
Who turns his back on her, who kills
Her element, night; his grief
Farcically knotted in a handkerchief,
A sybil’s
Prophetically stitched remembrancer
Webbed and embroidered with the zodiac,
This mythical, horned beast who’s no more
Monstrous for being black.
- The owl, a symbol of wisdom and forewarning, appears with “torches” (eyes or lamps) that are “guttering” (flickering, dying out).
- This creates an ominous mood: knowledge or truth is being obscured, and chaos is spreading across the world.
- It suggests a prophetic darkness—something terrible is about to happen.
- Augury refers to prophecy, signs of fate, or omens (especially from birds).
- The shriek may be both the cry of the owl and a metaphorical warning about doom or betrayal.
- This heightens the tension, as if the world itself is giving a warning.
- A male figure, described as “earthen bulk” (large, heavy, connected to primal, elemental force), overshadows a female figure.
- His presence is like an eclipse, blocking her light and freedom.
- The woman (likely Desdemona, in the Othello allusion) is buried under his overpowering force.
- A vivid image of violence: the man’s “smoky” (dark, destructive, consuming) hand destroys her purity.
- “Marble throat” symbolizes innocence, beauty, and fragility. The image is both sensual and destructive—love turning violent.
- The male figure is identified as Africa—a direct allusion to Othello (the Moor, an African general in Shakespeare’s play).
- The “sidling shadow” suggests how Othello is viewed as both fascinating and threatening.
- “Halves your world with doubt” points to the racial and cultural tension: Othello’s presence divides Venice (and Desdemona’s world) with suspicion and fear.
- Walcott here reworks Shakespeare’s imagery, layering it with colonial and racial undertones.
Central Meaning of This Stanza
This stanza dramatizes the tragic, violent union of Othello and Desdemona through dark, apocalyptic imagery. Walcott uses symbols of prophecy (owl, augury), cosmic disturbance (eclipse, chaos), and racial identity (Africa as shadow) to show how love is overshadowed by suspicion, violence, and the destructive force of history.
It frames Othello not just as an individual but as a symbol of Africa—carrying the weight of race, colonialism, and cultural difference—which overwhelms and destabilizes the world of the play.
“Put out the light", and God’s light is put out.
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This directly echoes Othello’s line from Shakespeare: “Put out the light, and then put out the light.”
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Othello means extinguishing the candle and then extinguishing Desdemona’s life.
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Walcott deepens the meaning: extinguishing Desdemona’s life is like extinguishing God’s light—something sacred, divine, and irreplaceable.
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Her death is framed not just as personal tragedy but as a cosmic, spiritual loss.
“That flame extinct, she contemplates her dream”
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Once “the light” (her life) is extinguished, Desdemona is imagined as lingering in a dream-like state.
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Death is figured as a transition into contemplation, into an eternal dream.
“Of him as huge as night, as bodiless,”
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She dreams of Othello—no longer the man she loved, but a vast, overwhelming, shadowy figure.
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“Huge as night” suggests both immensity and darkness.
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“Bodiless” emphasizes that he is no longer her intimate lover but an abstract force—jealousy, violence, racial myth, a destructive legend.
“As starred with medals, like the moon”
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Othello is imagined as decorated, heroic, like a military figure covered in medals.
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Yet the comparison to the moon is cold, distant, untouchable—unlike the warmth of the sun.
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It reflects how Othello has shifted from being a loving partner to a mythic, tragic figure.
“A fable of blind stone.”
In the end, Othello becomes a “fable”—a story retold, emptied of tenderness, hardened into history.
“Blind stone” evokes both death and monumentalization (statues, gravestones).
He is no longer a man of flesh and love but a rigid, unfeeling figure, frozen in tragedy.
Central Meaning of This Passage
This stanza captures the moment of Desdemona’s death and its transformation into myth. Walcott uses Shakespeare’s imagery but intensifies it: Othello’s act of killing Desdemona is equated with extinguishing divine light. After death, Desdemona envisions Othello not as her beloved but as a distant, monumental, destructive figure—a tragic fable carved in stone.
It reflects how intimate love is lost to history, myth, and racial violence, showing the dehumanization of both Othello and Desdemona in tragedy.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
Stanza 3
“Dazzled by that bull’s bulk against the sun / Of Cyprus, couldn’t she have known”
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Othello is likened to a bull: powerful, imposing, associated with brute force and sexuality.
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“Against the sun of Cyprus” → sets the scene in Cyprus, where much of Othello unfolds, but also suggests mythic grandeur (the bull silhouetted against the sun).
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Desdemona is described as being “dazzled” by his power and presence, perhaps blinded by love or attraction.
“Like Pasiphaë, poor girl, she’d breed horned monsters?”
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Pasiphaë in Greek myth fell in love with a bull (under a curse) and gave birth to the Minotaur, a horned monster.
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By comparing Desdemona to Pasiphaë, Walcott suggests that her love for Othello—figured as a bull—was doomed, unnatural, and destined to produce monstrous consequences (jealousy, violence, tragedy).
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It is not literal breeding but metaphorical: her marriage breeds destruction.
“That like Eurydice, her flesh a flare / Travelling the hellish labyrinth of his mind / His soul would swallow hers?”
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Eurydice: wife of Orpheus, who dies and is lost in the underworld.
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Desdemona is compared to Eurydice: her life becomes a flame (“flesh a flare”) trying to survive inside the “hellish labyrinth” of Othello’s tormented, jealous mind.
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The “labyrinth” ties back to the Minotaur myth, reinforcing Othello’s mind as a dark maze of suspicion and passion.
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Ultimately, his soul “swallows hers”—his destructive jealousy consumes her life and identity.
“Her white flesh rhymes with night, she climbs, secure.”
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Contrast between Desdemona’s whiteness and Othello’s blackness (“night”) is emphasized.
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The word “rhymes” suggests both attraction and opposition: their union is poetic yet doomed by racialized difference.
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“She climbs, secure” implies Desdemona’s innocence and confidence in her love, unaware of the tragedy awaiting her.
Big Picture of This Stanza
This stanza mythologizes Desdemona and Othello’s relationship through Greek mythology:
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Pasiphaë + Minotaur → her love creates monstrous tragedy.
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Eurydice + Orpheus → she is consumed in his hellish, jealous descent.
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The final image highlights the racial tension: her whiteness and his darkness bound together in a fatal “rhyme.”
Walcott is showing how Desdemona, blinded by love, could not foresee how Othello’s inner turmoil (racial alienation, jealousy, mythic darkness) would destroy her.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
Stanza 4
This stanza is short but very dense, and it brings together themes of race, sexuality, myth, and tragedy.
“Virgin and ape, maid and malevolent Moor,”
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“Virgin” → Desdemona: pure, innocent, idealized.
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“Ape” → a racist stereotype historically used against Africans, here reflecting how Othello is perceived by Venetian society (not how Walcott himself sees him).
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“maid and malevolent Moor” → again sets up the racial and moral contrast: Desdemona’s innocence versus the perception of Othello as dark, dangerous, “malevolent.”
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Walcott is echoing the animalistic imagery Iago uses in Shakespeare’s Othello (“an old black ram is tupping your white ewe”), but with greater mythic weight.
“Their immortal coupling still halves our world.”
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The relationship of Desdemona and Othello has become symbolic, larger than life—an “immortal coupling.”
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“Halves our world” → it creates division: white/black, purity/animality, innocence/danger, Europe/Africa.
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This line underscores how their love story continues to embody tensions of race and gender even beyond the play.
“He is your sacrificial beast, bellowing, goaded,”
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Othello is described as a sacrificial beast: like a bull in a ritual sacrifice or bullfight.
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“bellowing, goaded” → suggests his suffering, his being provoked (by Iago’s manipulations, by societal prejudice).
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He becomes a victim of forces larger than himself—both personal jealousy and cultural racism.
“A black bull snarled in ribbons of its blood.”
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Othello as a black bull completes the mythic image: powerful, majestic, but doomed.
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“Snarled in ribbons of its blood” → he is both violent and victimized, bleeding and trapped in the consequences of his passion and jealousy.
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The image recalls the earlier Pasiphaë/Minotaur myth and the sacrificial rituals, but now intensified into an image of destruction and pity.
Big Picture of This Stanza
This stanza crystallizes the entire tragedy of Othello in mythic terms:
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Othello and Desdemona’s union (“virgin and ape”) represents the eternal conflict of racial and cultural difference.
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Their love, instead of bridging the divide, “halves our world.”
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Othello becomes a tragic, sacrificial figure: both beast and victim, consumed by passion, jealousy, and the prejudices surrounding him.
Walcott’s language makes Othello not just a character, but an archetype—a symbol of the eternal struggle between love and prejudice, desire and destruction.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
Stanza 5
This is where Walcott complicates and deepens Othello’s tragedy.
“And yet, whatever fury girded / On that saffron-sunset turban, moon-shaped sword”
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Othello is imagined as a figure of exotic nobility and war: the “saffron-sunset turban” (eastern, Moorish attire, tinged with the fiery colors of passion and tragedy).
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The “moon-shaped sword” → both his status as a warrior and a symbol of Islam/Moorish culture (crescent moon).
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“Whatever fury girded” → whatever anger or destructive impulse he carried.
“Was not his racial, panther-black revenge / Pulsing her chamber with raw musk, its sweat,”
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Walcott directly denies the stereotype that Othello’s actions were racially driven or merely animalistic lust/revenge.
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“panther-black revenge” → is the racist fantasy Europeans projected onto Othello.
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Walcott insists that Othello’s killing of Desdemona was not simply a product of race or bestial passion (“raw musk, its sweat”).
“But horror of the moon’s change, / Of the corruption of an absolute,”
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Instead, Othello’s real tragedy is metaphysical, the fear of corruption:
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The moon’s change → symbol of mutability, betrayal, or disloyalty.
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“corruption of an absolute” → Othello cannot bear the thought that Desdemona, whom he saw as pure and perfect, could be tainted by infidelity.
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His fury comes from the collapse of the ideal he worshipped, not from some “racial revenge.”
“Like a white fruit / Pulped ripe by fondling but doubly sweet.”
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Desdemona, compared to a white fruit, evokes innocence, purity, and also sensuality.
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Othello both adored her and feared her ripeness being corrupted by another man’s touch.
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The paradox “doubly sweet” shows how her supposed corruption makes her at once desirable and intolerable, leading to destructive jealousy.
Big Picture of This Stanza
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Walcott reframes Othello’s tragedy:
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Not about race → but about the collapse of ideals, the shattering of absolute love.
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Othello’s jealousy is driven by his horror of imperfection in what he saw as a flawless union.
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The stanza ends the poem on a philosophical note: the tragedy is not in Othello’s blackness but in his human, universal yearning for absolutes — love untainted, devotion unchanging — which reality can never sustain.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
“And so he barbarously arraigns the moon”
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Arraigns → accuses, puts on trial.
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Othello (and by extension, mankind) blames the moon for what it has witnessed — for cycles of passion, betrayal, lust, and violence.
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The moon here is not only a natural image but also a symbol of mutability (always changing, never constant).
“For all she has beheld since time began,”
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The moon has seen everything through human history — passion, betrayal, murder, lust.
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It becomes a silent witness to the endless repetition of human folly.
“For his own night-long lechery, ambition,”
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The “he” here is Othello (but also Everyman).
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He blames cosmic forces (the moon, fate) for what is really his own flaw: his lust, jealousy, ambition.
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This is a critique of how humans project guilt onto external forces rather than taking responsibility.
“While barren innocence whimpers for pardon.”
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Innocence (Desdemona, perhaps also a symbol of purity in general) suffers.
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“Barren” → emphasizes that innocence is powerless, unfruitful in the face of corruption.
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It is innocence that ends up begging for mercy, while guilt dominates.
“And it is still the moon, she silvers love, / Limns lechery, and stares at our disgrace.”
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The moon remains indifferent, shining impartially.
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She “silvers love” (makes love look beautiful, romantic) but also “limns lechery” (highlights lust and corruption).
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She simply stares — a detached observer of human contradictions, unable to intervene.
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The stanza ends with a haunting reminder: humanity’s failures are eternal, overseen by the same moon that lights our tenderness and our disgrace.
Central Idea of This Stanza
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Walcott universalizes Othello’s tragedy: it is not just the story of one man but of humanity’s eternal cycle of passion, betrayal, and blame.
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The moon symbolizes time, mutability, and indifferent witness to human contradictions.
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Othello’s downfall is not caused by race or by fate but by the human tendency to project blame outward while destroying innocence.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
“Only annihilation can resolve / The pure corruption in her dreaming face.”
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Annihilation = Desdemona’s death.
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Othello believes her face, so pure yet (to him) corrupted by imagined infidelity, can only be “purified” by destruction.
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This reflects Othello’s tragic logic: the only way to save her purity is to kill her.
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A paradox: “pure corruption” — she looks innocent, but he is convinced she is guilty.
“A bestial, comic agony.”
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Her murder is described as both animalistic (bestial) and tragically absurd (comic).
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Walcott highlights the grotesque irony of this tragedy: Othello’s jealous rage degrades him into a caricature, his dignity reduced to something pitiful.
“We harden / With mockery at this blackamoor”
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Blackamoor → a derogatory term historically used for black people, here referring to Othello.
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The audience may feel both pity and contempt — the play invites tragic sympathy, but Walcott reminds us of the racist lens through which audiences have often judged Othello.
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“We harden” = we distance ourselves, refusing compassion, mocking instead of empathizing.
“Who turns his back on her, who kills / Her element, night;”
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Othello kills Desdemona, extinguishing her life.
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But symbolically, she is tied to “night” (innocence, love, femininity), which he destroys in a perverse reversal — the Moor, identified with night/blackness, kills her night.
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Suggests he destroys his own essence in the act.
“his grief / Farcically knotted in a handkerchief,”
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The infamous handkerchief from Othello is mentioned.
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A tragicomic symbol: such a small object becomes the trigger for vast destruction.
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“Farcically knotted” — his grief is bound up in something ridiculous, a stage prop almost, which makes the tragedy at once devastating and absurd.
“A sybil’s / Prophetically stitched remembrancer / Webbed and embroidered with the zodiac,”
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The handkerchief is mythologized.
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A sybil (prophetess) is said to have stitched it; it is embroidered with signs of fate (the zodiac).
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Walcott highlights the superstitious, fatalistic aura Othello attaches to it.
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What should be a token of love becomes a cosmic “remembrancer” (reminder), a fatal sign.
“This mythical, horned beast who’s no more / Monstrous for being black.”
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Othello is likened to a beast — horned like a cuckold, monstrous in jealousy.
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But Walcott makes a crucial point: his monstrosity is not because of his blackness, but because of his human flaws (jealousy, passion, rage).
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This line critiques racist interpretations of Othello that see his tragedy as rooted in race rather than in universal human frailty.
Central Meaning of This Stanza
This stanza dramatizes Othello’s murder of Desdemona, showing how a love token (the handkerchief) becomes the ridiculous but fatal pivot of tragedy. Walcott emphasizes the grotesque mixture of grandeur and absurdity — Othello is both a mythical figure (a “horned beast”) and a farcical one (destroyed by a handkerchief). Most importantly, Walcott insists that Othello is not “monstrous for being black,” but for being human — caught in the universal cycle of jealousy, passion, and destruction.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
🔎 Technical Analysis of Goats and Monkeys
1. Title
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“Goats and Monkeys” comes from Othello (Act I, Scene i), where Iago crudely imagines Desdemona and Othello’s union:
“Blessed fig’s-end! The wine she drinks is made of grapes: if she had been blessed, she would never have loved the Moor. … making the beast with two backs.”
And later, “Blessed fig’s-end! Goats and monkeys!” -
It reduces love into bestiality, setting the tone of animal imagery and racial stereotyping.
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Walcott reclaims this insult as the title — suggesting he will interrogate, expose, and reframe it.
2. Form & Structure
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Free verse, no fixed rhyme scheme → reflects chaos, instability, and fragmentation of Othello’s world.
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Variable stanza length → mimics shifts between myth, history, and drama.
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The movement is dramatic-epic: the poem reads like a chorus in a tragedy, commenting on actions.
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Repetition of mythic allusions and animal imagery builds a cumulative rhythm.
3. Tone
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Shifts constantly:
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Epic/mythic (“Africa, a vast sidling shadow”)
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Tragic (“Only annihilation can resolve the pure corruption”)
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Grotesque/Comic (“farcically knotted in a handkerchief”)
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This fluctuation between grandeur and absurdity mirrors Othello’s own tragic fall.
4. Imagery
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Animal Imagery: owl, bull, goat, ape → echo Iago’s bestial slurs.
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Celestial/Moon Imagery: moon, stars, eclipse → symbols of fate, shifting light/darkness, Desdemona’s innocence.
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Fire/Light: torches, flame, eclipse → Othello’s extinguishing of Desdemona’s life.
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Textile/Handkerchief: stitched, webbed, embroidered → domestic object elevated into fatal symbol.
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Mythological Figures: Pasiphaë (Minotaur), Eurydice (underworld), sybil (prophecy) → Desdemona mythologized, Othello epic-ized.
5. Allusions & Intertextuality
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Shakespeare’s Othello: plot, imagery, and Othello’s lines (“Put out the light, then put out the light”).
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Greek Mythology:
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Pasiphaë & the Minotaur → destructive desire creates monsters.
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Eurydice → descent into darkness, victim of love.
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Christian/Islamic Echoes: sacrificial beast, prophetic objects.
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Astrological/Zodiacal: fate inscribed in stars, inevitability.
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These elevate Othello’s private tragedy into a universal myth.
6. Language & Diction
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Elevated, lyrical diction (“his smoky hand has charred that marble throat”) contrasts with coarse terms (“blackamoor,” “beast”).
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Juxtaposes mythic grandeur with racial slurs, dramatizing how Othello is seen both as a tragic hero and as a mocked outsider.
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Heavy use of enjambment → reflects turbulence, overflowing emotion.
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Dense metaphors layer meaning, making interpretation deliberately complex.
7. Themes Expressed Through Technical Devices
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Race & Otherness → through animal metaphors, racial slurs, and the mocking tone.
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Myth vs. Reality → Othello and Desdemona are cast in mythic archetypes, yet their tragedy pivots on something absurd (a handkerchief).
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Jealousy & Desire → recurring fire/heat imagery.
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Love and Death → light/dark symbolism, eclipse imagery.
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Tragedy as Farce → the blend of epic and comic tones undermines the solemnity of the tragedy.
8. Symbolism
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Handkerchief: more than a love-token → becomes cosmic, “embroidered with the zodiac,” symbolizing how private love gets trapped in fate and superstition.
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Moon: feminine principle, purity, cyclical corruption.
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Horned Beast: Othello as cuckold, bull, and mythic Minotaur, embodying jealousy and bestial rage.
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Eclipse/Darkness: Desdemona’s life and light blotted out.
9. Irony
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The great tragic act (Desdemona’s murder) rests on something as small as a handkerchief → absurdity within grandeur.
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Othello becomes both a noble tragic hero and an object of mockery — “comic agony.”
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Walcott critiques how Othello is consumed by audiences: admired yet racialized, mythologized yet mocked.
10. Poetic Devices
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Metaphor & Simile: “as huge as night,” “like Eurydice,” “a black bull snarled in ribbons of its blood.”
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Personification: moon as judge, night as element, handkerchief as prophetic.
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Alliteration & Assonance: “smoky hand has charred that marble throat” → sound intensifies violence.
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Juxtaposition: Virgin/ape, maid/Moor, innocence/bestiality.
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Paradox: “pure corruption” → innocence that looks guilty.
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| Goats and Monkeys by Sir Derek Alton Walcott |
1. Q: What is the central theme of Goats and Monkeys?
A: The poem explores racial otherness, jealousy, myth, and tragedy through the lens of Othello, blending Shakespearean drama with mythological and modern imagery.
2. Q: Why does Walcott use the title Goats and Monkeys?
A: The title comes from a line in Othello, where Othello refers to base instincts. Walcott uses it to highlight the animalistic, irrational, and tragic elements of human passion.
3. Q: How does Walcott connect the poem to Othello?
A: He directly references Othello’s jealousy, Desdemona’s innocence, and the infamous handkerchief, reworking Shakespeare’s tragedy into a modern, mythic meditation on race and desire.
4. Q: What role does mythology play in the poem?
A: Walcott fuses Greek myths (Pasiphaë, Minotaur, Eurydice, Sybil) with Othello, showing how timeless archetypes of lust, betrayal, and fate intersect with colonial and racial anxieties.
5. Q: How does the poem deal with the theme of race?
A: Othello is portrayed as “Africa, a vast sidling shadow,” and as a “black bull.” Walcott highlights how Othello’s race marks him as other, making his passion both feared and exoticized.
6. Q: What is the significance of the handkerchief?
A: The handkerchief symbolizes love, betrayal, and fate. Walcott calls it “a sybil’s prophetically stitched remembrancer,” suggesting it holds mythical, almost cosmic weight in the tragedy.
7. Q: How does Walcott portray Desdemona?
A: She is shown as innocent and luminous, compared to the moon, yet tragically caught in Othello’s consuming jealousy and violence.
8. Q: What tone does the poem adopt?
A: The tone shifts between epic grandeur, tragic intensity, and dark comedy, especially when Othello’s grief is described as “farcically knotted in a handkerchief.”
9. Q: What literary devices dominate the poem?
A: Metaphor, allusion, paradox, juxtaposition, and mythological imagery dominate, creating a dense and layered reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy.
10. Q: What is the overall message of the poem?
A: Walcott suggests that Othello’s downfall is not merely racial revenge but a universal human tragedy—rooted in jealousy, desire, and the corruption of love. By fusing myth, history, and drama, he shows how personal passion reflects broader cultural conflicts.
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