A Far Cry from Africa

Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa” tackles the complexities of identity and colonization through a close examination of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya between 1952-1960. Utilizing the rich flora and fauna of Africa, the poem establishes a dichotomy between nature and civilization in order to critique humanity’s proclivity toward violence. The speaker has a diverse racial background. He both declares his deep love for the English language and his deep disapproval of English colonial occupation in Kenya. However, he also strongly opposes the violent tactics the Kenyans, or Kikuyu, are using in their fight to overthrow the British regime.

The poem opens with an almost cinematic quality, describing a vast savannah with rustling grassland and comparing the grasses of Africa to an animal pelt. The animal comparison establishes Africa itself as an animal with a “tawny pelt” (Line 1) blowing in the above-mentioned breeze. The animal rustled by wind suggests that a wind of change is afoot. The Kikuyu move across this landscape, as apt to the environment as swift and agile flies. By comparing the Kikuyu to flies, this idea that they “Batten upon the bloodstreams of the veldt” (Line 3) connotes a locking down or attaching (i.e. “batten”) of the flies. The native Kenyans attach to the veins of the land like a mosquito attaches to suck the blood from the skin. This implies that not only are the Kenyans endemic to the land—it is theirs and they belong to it— but they can also be seen as parasitic to the land: The speaker sets up this tension to explore for the rest of the poem. The next two lines solidify this violent picture, describing corpses “scattered through a paradise” (Line 4). This idea of paradise has implicit connotations within the context of colonization, as Europeans often described the foreign places they visited as paradise, and often as a justification for the seizure of the land in order to cultivate it and strip its natural resources for material gain. The stanza critiques the bloodthirsty violence enacted upon the land by the Kikuyu, suggesting that the speaker (and Walcott) doesn’t approve of these violent methods.

The second half of the first stanza deals with the brutality of British colonial rule. The symbol of the worm becomes a metaphor for the destruction of warfare, as the worm is a “colonel of carrion” (Line 5), colonel being a title for a British army officer, and insists upon paying no sympathy or regard to the dead. The speaker is implying that this is the consequence of war, to turn soldiers of both sides into carrion for a cruel worm to feast upon. The speaker remarks that these conflicts, wars, and borders are all being discussed by those who cannot possibly understand the lived experiences of those present to the violence. The speaker feels that those who have no idea what it is truly like to live through such an event, these absentee policy makers and mathematicians, have no right to make decisions concerning the conflict. The speaker emphasizes this idea when he discusses the case of the white child murdered in their bed by the Kenyan fighters: “What is that to the white child hacked in bed?” (Line 9). But the speaker is not implicating one group over the other, and goes on to say, “To savages, expendable as Jews?” (Line 10). This is the primary tension of the poem, as the speaker condemns both sides in a moral opposition to violence of any kind, for any justification, yet also still sympathizes with both.

The next stanza remains set in an idyllic African landscape, opening with another cinematic image of farmers threshing crops. Ibises, a long-legged wading bird, erupt into the air in a white cloud of dust. The speaker notes that the calls that the birds make are as ancient as civilization itself—perhaps even more so. The poem rests on images of other natural settings: “From the parched river or beast-teeming plain” (Line 14). This sets up the dichotomy between civilization and religion with the natural world that the speaker then breaks down by calling out the hypocrisy of these “upright” (Line 16) men:

The violence of beast on beast is read

As natural law, but upright man

seeks his divinity by inflicting pain (Lines 15-17).

The speaker is questioning how one can justify this kind of violence when one claims to be close to God and different than beasts and animals. The speaker is proposing that when humans behave in this way, they are closer to beasts than to men: “Delirious as these worried beasts, his wars / Dance to the tightened carcass of a drum” (Lines 18-19). They dance to a beat of a drum made literally from the bodies of the dead. The speaker also critiques the Kikuyu’s sense of courage, viewing it as a biological reaction to potential extermination and a fearful indignation that white colonizers will justify eradication by claiming it was necessary to achieve peace.

The final stanza opens with a personification of the word “necessity,” creating a character with dirty hands, filthy with the cruel and indecent acts of war. It is war that is this “brutish necessity” (Line 22), once again referencing the speaker’s feelings about the similarities between war and nature. The speaker brings in another example of a war, the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, that he feels was a “waste of our compassion” (Line 24), mirroring the language of the worm from the first stanza. The speaker seems to be wavering between absolute disgust and total indifference; over the course of the poem, he begins to mimic the cynical and inhumane sentiments of the colonel of carrion. The speaker underscores this hopelessness through the metaphorical wrestling match between a gorilla and a superhero, a wrestling match that is wildly unfair to the gorilla, however powerful and ferocious the animal may be.

Halfway through the last stanza, the speaker begins to pose the unanswerable questions that plague his psyche. He asks, “I who am poisoned with the blood of both / Where shall I turn, divided to the vein?” (Lines 26-27). It is not just that the speaker shares the ancestry of both the Africans and the English, but that this blood poisons him, communicating the shame he feels towards both his English and African ties. But how can he choose one side over the other? It would be like splitting open his own veins. He describes his explicit hatred toward British colonialism, cursing “The drunken officer of British rule” (Line 29). Quite literally, the speaker accuses the British officers of being drunk, but also implies that the British Empire as a whole rules over its commonwealth states like a drunken fool, careless and ruthless. His most moving plea, “how choose / Between this Africa and the English tongue I love?” (Lines 29-30), is also his most revealing, as the speaker is describing the aspect of his own British colonization to which he feels most attached. The English language is his way of communicating and expressing himself. It is his mastery of the language that has allowed him to write this poem and speak these moving words. However, because of his connection to Africa, he can never be fully English. He is faced with either betraying both the Africans and English or turning into someone like them, someone violent and cruel. The final lines of the poem express his dilemma most concisely: “How can I face such slaughter and be cool? How can I turn from Africa and live?” (Lines 32-33). As much as he hates the British, he still cannot accept the violence of the Mau Mau. Yet his African heritage is such a significant part of his identity, as well as his belief in a decolonized, independent Africa, that turning his back on Africa feels like a death sentence.