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Name Course Instructor Date Omeros Book by Walcot Omeros prominently employs the use of symbolism to capture the reality of the original themes in the poem. A character such as Philoctetes does not feature much in the poem but have a significant role in articulating the hidden message in the literature. Philoctetes experience degradation from sailor to a gardener in a yonder land and there he contemplates of his own death as he tends his yam garden. The passage in chapter five in book 1, the sheep repeating his name and the yam leaves in his orchard bending like a flame of candles. The part is difficult to comprehend as he says that the candle's thought triggers him into thinking about his death and the appearance of the maps of Africa and the white veins bringing the confusion in understanding the passage. However, there is substantive information after reading the passage about his knee described as a radiant iron. ‘His knee was a radiant iron, his chest was a sack of ice, and behind the bars of his rusted teeth, like a mongoose in a cage’CITATION Wal14 p "p. 21" l 1033 (Walcott p. 21). The suffering and condemnation of Philoctetes from an angler to poor small farmer sheds lights as the poet earlier mentions it the, ‘he believed the swelling came from the chained ankles of his grandfathers’CITATION Wal14 p "p. 19" l 1033 (Walcott p. 19). The thought of his death reflects back to the enslaved African during colonization and the suffering they went through. The alienation and farming that Philoctetes does in pain and toil are symbolic to the Biblical Adam’s suffering. Though his suffering is in connection with the colonial history, where slaves and the
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