Abstract: Today, it is said that the colonial age is over, and the new age is called “postcolonial”. However, the traces of colonialism can still be observed in the postcolonial period, for colonialism opened a big wound in the psychology, culture and identity of the once colonized people. Thus, the major themes in the works written in the postcolonial period have been the fragmentation and identity crisis experienced by the once colonized peoples and the important impacts of colonialism on the indigenous. Derek Walcott in his Dream on Monkey Mountain attempts a psychopathology of colonialism. Makak, the chief character, suffers from in Fanon’s words, arsenal of complexes. However, Walcott also articulates the remedy from this kind of inferiority complex through the decolonization of the mind. Using the arguments of Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Black Skin, White Masks, the researcher attempts to prove that Makak has lost his identity and is self-loathing because of the effects of colonialism on him, and that he only regains his identity after he sheds the trapping.
Keywords: Colonialism, Post colonialism, Identity Crisis, Decolonization.
Title: Post-Colonial Identity Crisis in Derek Wolcott’s Dream on a Monkey Mountain
Author: Syeda Saba Batool
International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research
ISSN 2348-3156 (Print), ISSN 2348-3164 (online)
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