Commentary on Fame, by Derek Walcott
Diana Gondwe
For: Mr. Jones
Due Date: September 4, 2003
Word Count: 1,002
Poets use diction to express a thought or to translate a message. Poets’ diction change according to they themselves, their characteristics, or the audience in which the poem is referring to. Derek Walcott uses diction to certain varying degrees, to express a thought and to evoke emotion. The poets’ diction is further cultivated when they use a certain style, imagery and the readers thoughts towards the mood. The following paragraphs will narrate how diction, imagery, style, and mood are being used in this poem and how this affects the poem.
Derek Walcott in the poem Fame uses an oxymoron to make his thought of fame and all the attachments to it is revealed in a different light. The connotation of fame is of richness, partying, parading and lavishing in high-class activities. However the poem itself does not show these attributes of fame, but illustrates emptiness, ass the poem says, “Sundays, an emptiness as in Balthus” (Lines 1-3). From a “brown tower at the end of a street” (Lines 6 and 7), and the already known fact that it is Sunday, the phrase describes a church. The implication surrounding a church is chapel music, a piano playing, and hymns but none of these expressed in the poem. Instead Walcott write “a blue without bells, like a dead canvas set in its white frame” (Lines 8-10). The blue illustrates the sky around the church, and the bells are church bells, which are not ringing. This whole scene depicted is eerie and helps to state that there is something amiss. The way in which the poet makes the scene eerie is his choice of words of describing the sky “a blue without bells”. In itself the phrase gives the feeling of some loss, easily in grasp but yet not. This loss is the laziness of Sundays and having no worries. Nevertheless with fame on the mind this loss cannot be regained, as everything must be hurried for a Monday to work and gain fame. As the phrases “a crawling clock” (Line 20) depicts a slow clock the crawling gives of the sense of torture and “a craving for work” (line 21) impart that Sundays are too slow and are torments as they block the workdays to fame. One can see that from the poets’ use of words he easily describes the downside of fame.
