16 pages • 32 minutes read
Derek WalcottA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In “Love After Love,” Walcott deeply considers the concept of the “self.” While the poem's title implies a standard love poem might follow, the poem deviates from everyday love poems to explore love of self over love of others. Walcott first asks the question, “What is the self?” Or, more directly, he calls for the reader to ask the questions: “Who are you?” and “Do you still know yourself?” It would be easy enough to consider these questions rhetorically and therefore strictly lyrically; however, Walcott’s attention to this theme digs deeper. He doesn’t just pose the question of self-knowledge, he makes “the self” its own separate entity, some person who has become “the stranger who has loved you / all your life” (Lines 9-10). Here, Walcott implies that readers can be strangers to themselves, that the needs of daily life (including romantic love and yearning for admiration from others) can distort the understanding of self to the point of strangeness and disassociation.
The poem's heart offers a way to break this cycle of disassociation: It is only through reunification with the stranger that is the self that the reader can again attain love. Love, the speaker argues, must come from within, and it cannot be discovered with ease without knowing oneself intimately and coming to love this inner self.
By Derek Walcott
A Careful Passion
Derek Walcott
Adam's Song
Derek Walcott
A Far Cry from Africa
Derek Walcott
Dream on Monkey Mountain
Derek Walcott
Midsummer XXVII
Derek Walcott
Omeros
Derek Walcott
Pantomime
Derek Walcott
Ruins of a Great House
Derek Walcott
Sabbaths, WI
Derek Walcott
The Almond Trees
Derek Walcott
The Flock
Derek Walcott
The Schooner Flight
Derek Walcott
To Return To The Trees
Derek Walcott
Forgiveness
View Collection
Memory
View Collection
Nobel Laureates in Literature
View Collection
Poetry: Perseverance
View Collection
Popular Book Club Picks
View Collection
Required Reading Lists
View Collection
Short Poems
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection
Trust & Doubt
View Collection
Valentine's Day Reads: The Theme of Love
View Collection