Dream On Monkey Mountain Derek Walcott Summary

Dream on Monkey Mountain is a play written by Derek Walcott. The play was written during the 1970s and tells the story of Makak, an old man who sells charcoal and awakens in a prison cell at the start of the play. The play then tells how Makak was a great healer and had mystical powers bestowed on him by the Moon Goddess. He breaks out of prison to unite all the tribes of Africa and beheads the Moon Goddess, however, this was all a dream. Makak awakens in jail and is let out by the Corporal.
As one who has studied slavery in the Caribbean, I was very interested in this play. While this play had less stage directions than Camino Real and Waiting for Godot, the dialogue was effective and did not need to rely on stage directions. Something new that was introduced in this play was the use of epigraphs. The epigraphs basically summarized each act of the play and made me think about the material that I was about to read. Something that I found interesting was the use of a Greek chorus, however, I felt as if they were unnecessarily included in the play and had no overall effect on the story being told. Probably my

In the play, the only prominent woman is the white Moon Goddess. No other woman has a significant role. The play takes place somewhere in the West Indian Islands, which is the Caribbean (Walcott 210). Slaveholding societies in the western hemisphere during the eighteenth and nineteenth century (excluding the United States) wanted more male slaves instead of female slaves. This was heavily present in the Caribbean where the play takes place. Of the 4.3 million slaves that disembarked in the Caribbean during the Atlantic slave trade, 64 percent of them were male (Slave Voyages Database). Male slaves were valued because they worked harder in the fields. On the other hand, women only had to do simple housework, less manual labor, and