I’m not even sure if we’re supposed to blog this week, but since this would be my week to blog, I’ll do it anyway. I really enjoy reading plays – they’re quick to read and easy to search if I want to reread something, so it was nice to read these this week.
I’ll start with Cesaire’s play. It was really neat to read another work by a French/Francophone author (the first one being Camus back in September). I also enjoyed that he used the sort of ‘slang’ that Carribean francophones would use, I thought it brought a lot of authenticity to the play. Upon finishing this play, I kind of had the feeling that Christophe’s life is sort of like Macbeth’s – they are both ambitious men who are not reluctant to take down even their closest friends if their goals are even remotely threatened. And of course, both of them end up going mad and come to gory ends. I think that Cesaire did a really good job of chronicling Christophe’s life and it was nice to have a really thorough, historically accurate(?) take on who he really was.
Walcott’s play was also enjoyable. I found it reminded me of Antigone in it’s style and language. In fact, this play is part of a quartet of plays. Perhaps Walcott was taking a page from Sophocles when he decided to right about the history of Haiti? This play was a little easier to follow than Cesaire’s play, but I feel like the way it was written was a little more intimate due to the smaller cast of characters.
I think both plays gave me a better understanding of Henri Christophe’s reign, especially since the past two texts we’ve read offered different takes on the subject.
3 replies on “Thoughts on Henri Christophe”
Yes, you were supposed to blog this week! That way everyone has the same number of blog posts they’re supposed to do for Term 1. So it’s good you did one (though a bit late).
I like the connection to Macbeth with the Césaire play–it is quite clear that Christophe has lost his mind by the end, killing sleeping peasants and such. The Walcott play also refers to kings going mad: Dessalines is said to go mad (and admits it), and Brelle accuses Christophe of being insane before Christophe kills Brelle. So there’s definitely that theme in both plays, at least.
Walcott’s style is clearly very different from Césaire’s, but I’m curious just how it reminds you of Antigone. One thing I can think of is that it is more poetic than conversational (Walcott is a poet). It’s also fairly stripped down in terms of events, more so than Césaire’s, and also in terms of characters as you note here. Anything else remind you of Antigone?
Blogs are supposed to be done Monday by midnight right? I did this one around 8pm, but I know from the Blog Squad that sometimes it will take at least an hour for blog posts to show up on the common page for the group. Sorry for the confusion! And yes, it’s definitely Walcott’s style of writing that reminds me of Antigone. Just the phrasing and language were most reminiscent of it for me, and then I realized they both wrote a series of plays having to do with one event or story.
Yes, Monday at midnight. Good point about them showing up a bit later on the common page. I’ll need to take that into account in the future! An hour or so late is no biggie; it’s when it’s the next day, or two days later, etc., that it’s not so good!