الفهرس 
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Abstract
Derek Walcott (1930-2017) has conducted a lifelong struggle to integrate his divided identity because of the multicultural properties of the Caribbean society. Therefore, he suffers mainly from double belonging of languages, cultures, territories, identities and ethnicities. Walcott always confronts the question: to what world does he belong; the world of his ancestors or his present world in the colonial Caribbean society?. As a result, he lived most of his life in an identity crisis due to the lack of a well-defined identity. An examination of Walcott’s poetry shows the cultural divisions he experienced in the West Indies and the identity issues that associate with his multicultural origin. Walcott’s works, therefore, deal with the postcolonial social, political and cultural conflicts of the Caribbean society. The study tries to offer a literary and critical interpretation of Walcott’s major works of poetry in respect to questions of multiculturalism and cultural identity. The study deals with four works which are considered to be Walcott’s major poetic works and which best reflect the development of Walcott’s postcolonial ideas of multiculturalism and identity making. The works selected for the study are: In a Green Night(1962), Another Life(1973), Sea Grapes(1976) and Omeros(1990).
As one of the founding fathers of the Caribbean West Indian poetry, Walcott’s early works are based mainly on the imitation of recognized poets and writers. Moreover, the study has shown that, employing English styles and techniques in Walcott’s writings, lay his work open to criticism and debate over his literary production. However, this early period paved the way to Walcott’s fruitful future development. Throughout this thesis, the researcher demonstrates Walcott’s role in reshaping traditional forms and techniques to suit the particular local conditions of the Caribbean culture and in creating a Caribbean literary canon. Significantly, Walcott adopts and transforms elements of modern and classic poetry in order to articulate the complex relationship among, self, tradition, land and language. He succeeded in creating a modern poetry that reflects the experiences of the postcolonial Caribbean society. His main poetic models have been English and American ones. As a result, his works have been both underestimated and overestimated by critics. Walcott’s use of the Caribbean color, subject matter, landscape, the Caribbean vernacular, Creole language and structure contribute to the development of the Caribbean literature. The interaction of all these factors creates the Caribbean literary context.
Walcott draws his themes from the social, racial and political environment of the Caribbean society progressing from a hard and severe colonial period to a Caribbean independent status. Walcott’s chief concern was to create a new awareness of the Caribbean culture and to search for a meaningful identity in the Caribbean society. In both theme and technique, Walcott’s poetry demonstrates his multicultural mixed origin and reflects the conflict of the cultural values. Walcott’s poetry, therefore, constitutes a major contribution to the corpus of the Caribbean literature. His poetry is considered revolutionary in the sense of reconstructing a new Caribbean identity through the use of Creole language and his use of traditional poetic tools such as rhythm, metaphor and meter.