Summary
Jackson comes back to find Harry under the table with the icepick. Jackson remarks to himself about the icepick and exits quickly, returning dressed as Robinson Crusoe with the goatskin hat and umbrella. He has a hammer tucked into his waistband. Jackson throws a carry-away box across the room to Harry. He opens it to find the dead parrot. Harry calls Jackson a son of a bitch. Harry hurls the parrot into the sea. Jackson says, “First bath in five years.” Harry calls him a bloody savage. Affecting Friday’s voice, Jackson says the parrot wasn’t strangled; he choked from prejudice. Harry says a parrot can’t reason, then tells Jackson his people “create nothing” and “imitate everything.” He says even the parrot has been done before in The Seagull and Miss Julie. “That’s the trouble with shadows, right?” Harry says. “They can’t think for themselves.” He accuses Jackson of taking it out on the parrot, asking if it is one of his “African sacrifices.”
Harry imitates the parrot saying Heinegger as Jackson approaches the upturned table with his hammer. Harry warns him not to, saying the table is his. Jackson says the days of Harry’s people owning the island are gone. Harry picks up the icepick and says the costume is his too. Jackson removes the goatskin hat and tosses it with the parasol into the center of the stage. Harry says the hammer is his too. Jackson says he feels he is going to need it. Jackson mocks him by dropping to his knees and begging forgiveness for being a thief.
While Jackson writhes on the floor, Harry puts on the hat. He says he never hit any sergeant on the head like he claimed to have done. In fact, violence makes him sick. He doesn’t believe in ownership either. If he’d been more possessive and authoritative, his wife wouldn’t have left him. He says he doesn’t believe Jackson has put an icepick through anyone’s hand. That was just both of them acting. Jackson tells him not to be too sure about that. Harry says Jackson is a kind man who thinks he has to hide his kindness. Still on his back, Jackson asks Harry to bring him a beer. Harry offers Scotch, saying there isn’t any more beer.
With the Scotch bottle, Harry offers a toast to his “bloody wife.” Jackson sits up and begins to move off stage, saying he doesn’t think Harry should bad-talk her behind her back. Jackson returns with the photo of Harry’s wife. He says Harry should address her to her face. Harry calls him crazy. Jackson holds the photograph up and fakes an Englishwoman’s voice and asks how they can have a civilized conversation when Harry is always calling everything bullshit. Harry says, “Because you’re a silly selfish bitch and you killed our son!” Jackson wipes the eyes of the photo and asks if Harry can ever forgive her for that. As Harry’s wife, Jackson says he loves Harry and loved their son.
Jackson switches out of character back to himself. He asks if it was a murder or accident. Harry talks to the photo, wondering whether, if she really loved him, she would have gotten behind the wheel while drunk. Harry lunges at the photo and Jackson whips it away. Playing Harry's wife again, Jackson asks what Harry will do next. Harry tells “Ellen” that he’s giving up the theater and the bloody rat race to go somewhere he can get drunk every day while watching the sunset like Robinson Crusoe. It was the part she always said was the only one he could play.
Harry takes the photo and slams it on the table. He raises the icepick. Jackson says, as Ellen, “My face is my fortune.” Jackson whips the photo away while Harry is poised. He begins lunging at Jackson, who holds the photo before his face. Jackson dodges Harry, running around and using Ellen’s voice to call for the police, saying Harry has gone mad. He puts the photo down and jumps onto the ledge. Harry demands that Ellen get down, saying she is too conceited to kill herself. Jackson, as Ellen, demands that he push her if he hates her so much. Jackson asks if Harry will forgive her now or after she jumps.
When Jackson turns, teetering and about to jump, Harry shouts at Ellen to stop, saying he forgives her. Jackson turns. Harry sits on the floor. He confesses that the real reason he wanted to do the panto was to do it better than she ever did. He says, “You played Crusoe in the panto, Ellen. I was Friday. Black bloody greasepaint that made you howl. You wiped the stage with me … Ellen … well. Why not? I was no bloody good.”
In his own voice, Jackson asks Harry to get back to the play they were doing. He says they shall take it from “O silent sea and so on … wreathed in mist,” the first line of the monologue Harry wrote. Harry gets up and recites the lines from memory, prompted once by Jackson. When he mentions his son, Harry breaks down crying. Jackson says he thinks no one could act that well, so he must really be crying. Harry admits he was, and that he got carried away. He begins sobbing with laughter. Jackson begins to giggle with him.
Jackson says that next Friday, when the tourists come, Crusoe will be ready for them. They joke with each other, using the word 'goat' to make puns such as “goat to bed” and “e-goat-istical.” Jackson asks if Harry is okay. Harry says he is fine, and that “things like this have happened before, and they can happen again.” Harry asks if he understands. Jackson says he thinks Harry is making “a mole hill out of a mountain,” but he follows the logic.
The play ends with Jackson saying that all of this has made him decide to go back to the gift that’s his God-given calling—calypso. He sings his earlier song about “a Limey name Trewe come to Tobago.” The lyrics outline how Harry sought Jackson’s help in putting together a pantomime “man to man.” There is music playing and the sound of an audience applauding. When Harry joins in, Jackson asks to hold it. He then tells Harry, addressing him as Robinson, that, starting from Friday, they should talk about a raise. The lights fade out.
Analysis
Walcott returns to the themes of performance and resentment as Jackson sees Harry, now quite drunk, ostensibly lying in wait for Jackson while armed with an icepick. While Harry’s intentions are not made clear in the stage directions, Jackson isn’t willing to take the chance that Harry is simply arming himself with icepick as part of the character he is inhabiting. To counteract Harry’s intimidating performance, Jackson kills the hotel parrot and tosses it to Harry to show the violence of which he is capable.
The themes of mimicry and postcolonialism arise as Harry resentfully accuses Jackson and his people of being incapable of originality, claiming they merely imitate. In this case, Harry is accusing formerly colonized peoples of mimicking colonizers. Simultaneously, Harry is delivering a meta-commentary on the theatrical trope of a dead bird, which has been used before in other famous plays. Harry doubles down on his racist comments by likening the killing of the parrot to an “African sacrifice.”
While it seems the tension between the two is about to lead to physical violence, Jackson suddenly switches his performance and willingly disarms himself to plead forgiveness from Harry. Even though mockery and contempt are embedded in this new performance, Jackson successfully defuses the situation. Harry gives up his own tough-guy act and admits to having invented the story about knocking the sergeant unconscious. Harry proceeds to confess that his entire performance as a hotel owner has merely been an act, as he isn’t invested in the notion of ownership. Harry further outlines his belief that Jackson too is performing, and Jackson is in fact a much kinder man than he believes he can let on.
The theme of mimicry arises with Jackson’s eccentric decision to inhabit the role of Harry’s ex-wife, Ellen. With a photograph of Ellen held up as a crude mask, Jackson mimics an Englishwoman’s voice. In this role, Jackson prompts and provokes Harry, getting him to admit to his lingering resentment for Ellen, who not only killed their son in a drunk-driving accident, but left Harry afterward. Harry finally confesses that Ellen upstaged him as an actor, which made him want to try the Robinson Crusoe pantomime again, as though he could make up for the last time.
Having elicited these confessions from Harry, Jackson tries to steer his employer back to their pantomime. The dramatic interlude in which Harry releases his unexpressed grief over his son is contrasted with a return to the play’s comedic tone. Giggling together, the men pun on the word “goat.” Despite the intensity of the emotions he has just shown, Harry attempts to reduce the significance of his trauma. Jackson catches this return to denial and points out that Harry is making too little of something profoundly upsetting.
Walcott ends the play by returning to the theme of compromise. While the events of the play have led Jackson to decide he is willing to come out of retirement as a performer, he reminds Harry that they will not overcome the imbalance of their postcolonial relationship as white and Black, employer and employee, master and servant, until Harry pays him better. In this way, Walcott emphasizes the importance of ending the economic exploitation of formerly colonized nations and people for lasting peace and international stability.
