Verandah Flashcards
(15 cards)
Q1: What does the verandah symbolize in the poem?
A: It represents a liminal space between past and present, inside and outside, colonial history and personal identity—a threshold haunted by memory and unresolved legacy.
‘Q2: What do the “grey apparitions at verandah ends” represent?
A: They are ghosts of the colonial past—planters, soldiers, and empire-builders—whose influence still lingers even as their world fades into “ashes.”
Q3: What does Walcott mean by “your age is ashes, its coherence gone”?
A: He’s declaring that the era of colonial rule is over—its structure and meaning have collapsed, leaving only fragments and memories behind.
Q4: What is the significance of “tears were marketable gum”?
A: It’s a critique of colonial exploitation—emotion and suffering, even tears, were commodified under empire, reinforcing its inhumanity and hypocrisy.
Q5: How does Walcott describe the colonial elite?
A: He uses irony and vivid imagery—“Colonels, hard as the Commonwealth’s greenheart,” showing them as tough, resilient, but emotionally rigid and morally complicit.
Q6: What does the grandfather symbolize in the poem?
A: He embodies both personal and imperial legacy. A tragic figure, uprooted and suicidal, he represents displacement, failure, and the burden passed to future generations.
Q7: How is the grandfather’s death described?
A: As a “Roman End in suicide by fire,” combining tragic grandeur with destruction—his remains are gathered by his mixed-race son, symbolizing the inheritance of trauma.
Q8: What is meant by “Your house has voices, your burnt house shrills”?
A: The ancestral home may be destroyed, but its spirit survives through descendants—haunted yet still echoing with life, memory, and continuity.
Q9: What does the “fallen roof tree” represent, and why is it important?
A: It symbolizes the collapse of the colonial world, but is described as “seasoned timber,” suggesting that even in destruction, something durable remains.
Q10: What is the “sea-crossing” a metaphor for?
A: It evokes both historical colonial voyages and personal journeys of identity and inheritance, with the speaker “singed” by the passage, marked but surviving
Q11: What is the meaning behind “diamonds out of coals”?
A: This metaphor highlights transformation through suffering—pressures of history, race, and legacy can still yield beauty, wisdom, and resilience.
Q12: What does the speaker mean by “I am the man my father loved and was”?
A: It reflects a merging of identities across generations—accepting both his father’s love and the inherited traits of the men who came before him.
Q13: Why is the final gesture—extending a “darkening hand”—so important? -
A: It symbolizes the speaker’s readiness to confront, acknowledge, and reconcile with the ghosts of his past, accepting both ancestry and history.
Q14: What is the “last inheritance” according to the final line?
A: “Earth, our shrine and pardoner”—suggesting that in death, all divisions collapse; the earth receives all, and may offer final forgiveness and peace.
Q15: What are the major themes in Verandah?
A: Colonial legacy, personal and generational identity, displacement, memory, and the search for reconciliation across time and history.
