Summary
After the men finish lighting the cane on fire, and Ti-Jean leaves the stage, the frog enters and sings a brief song about the burning field and the Devil who wanders back at dawn, drunk and singing. Just as the frog says, the Devil arrives on stage, singing about hell. He is carrying the old man’s mask, and briefly puts it on, but soon takes it off again. He is feeling sorry for himself, because his immorality means he can never feel anything, and can never enjoy the world for what it is.
Clearly quite drunk, he yells at a firefly, and jumps back from a frog who he mistakes for a monster. Still drinking, he complains about his past. The Devil remembers when he was God’s right-hand man, and how he was thrown down from heaven for disobedience. He mourns his loneliness, and how he has lost everything, even the love of God. Yet he also curses himself for having been so dependent on someone else. Just as he realizes that in this moment he is experiencing a moment of weakness, he sees Ti-Jean returning and puts back on his planter mask.
Ti-Jean pretends to be drunk as well, and acts as though he is excited to be friends with the Devil. As they chat, the clever younger brother slips in that he has eaten the Devil’s goat. The Devil is impressed with Ti-Jean’s courage, and Ti-Jean replies that he knows the only way to annoy him is through “rank disobedience.” Too tired to respond, the Devil tells him that he has won for the night, and asks Ti-Jean to escort him home. On the way back, the two continue talking, and the Devil takes up the topics he was obsessing over on his own, telling Ti-Jean of all he lost through his desertion of God.
On the walk back, the Devil sees a bright light in the distance, and Ti-Jean tells him that his house is burning—the fire from the cane field has spread to the manor. Suddenly, the Devil takes off the planter’s mask and bursts into a rage. Ti-Jean knows he has won the bet by getting the Devil angry, but he also knows that the Devil will attempt to cheat him, rather than follow the rules of his own game. Indeed, the Devil quickly summons his demons to kill Ti-Jean.
However, suddenly the Bolom appears, begging the Devil to be fair. The Devil refuses, and then Mother appears again on the other side of the stage, praying for Ti-Jean. Again, the Devil stresses that he never keeps bargains. Ti-Jean commands the Devil to return Gros Jean and Mi-Jean to life as he had promised, but instead the Devil shows them already suffering in hell, before trying to seize the third brother and throw him into the fire as well. Crying for his mother, Ti-Jean again demands that the Devil pay part of the bargain, and make her rich in her old age. The Bolom also pleads with him, saying that he would rather have known life than be forever unborn.
Amidst all this chaotic pleading, the Devil finally seems to give in. He fills a vessel with money for Ti-Jean, and also shows him again his mother’s hut, with walls now glowing gold. However, Ti-Jean soon sees that this gold is only the light of the sun, and the Devil reveals that the mother is dying. The Devil wants to rejoice in Ti-Jean’s despair, but the frog encourages him to sing, and the youngest brother sings a song of heaven.
The combination of the beautiful song and Ti-Jean’s genuine grief brings the Devil to tears. At this, the Devil says that Ti-Jean has now truly earned his gift. The Bolom pleads that Ti-Jean use this rare offering to give him the gift of life, and the small brother consents. The Bolom is born as a new younger brother for Ti-Jean, and the Devil declares that the same eternal fight continues before leaving the stage. Alone with the Bolom and the animals, Ti-Jean gathers the sticks that the old man dropped, and sings a cheerful song about the possibility of defeating evil. He and the Bolom leave the stage, and the frog closes the play. Just as the play began with the frog telling the story of Ti-Jean and His Brothers, it ends with him summarizing the rest of Ti-Jean’s life, and concluding his tale.
Analysis
The second half of Act 3 is much more explicitly theological than the rest of the play. Although Ti-Jean and His Brothers is deeply grounded in Christianity, it is also quite disruptive in the ways it adapts traditional religious ideas.
The character of the Devil becomes much more three-dimensional towards the end of the play. For the first time, we see him alone on stage, without any of his masks. In his portrayal of the Devil, Walcott especially draws on John Milton’s famous work Paradise Lost, which is famous for its surprisingly sympathetic depiction of Satan. Walcott’s work frequently draws on the Western literary canon in complicated ways. Here, Walcott borrows Milton’s transformation of Satan into a kind of tragic hero, but he removes the unambiguous supremacy of God which concludes the epic.
Instead, in Ti-Jean and His Brothers, the difference between the Devil and God is not quite absolute. Both Ti-Jean and the Devil himself emphasize that he looks almost like God. The play also suggests that God is not necessarily all-powerful. When Mother pleads for an honorable death for her son, she says “Let him die as a man,/Even as your Own Son/Fought the Devil and died.” In traditional Christian doctrine, after his execution, Christ descends to hell and defeats the Devil, ensuring the salvation of all Christian souls. Here, he is instead described as dying. His death is an honorable one—indeed, the play suggests that there is something inherently valuable about death—but it isn’t clear that he is victorious over evil.
Therefore, although the play celebrates Ti-Jean’s faith in God, it also does a lot of questioning of Christian religious ideas. In their place, it suggests a theology in which what is most important is not defeating death, but rather understanding the value and beauty of life. The humanization of the Devil does a lot to emphasize this theme, because the Devil’s sadness fundamentally stems from his immortality. When he exclaims “Now that for one second was the knowledge of death. O Christ, how weary it is to be immortal,” he suggests that what is exhausting is not the brief moment in which he knows death, but instead all the immortal time in which he forgets about it.
This theme makes more sense with the end of the play. When the Devil tells Ti-Jean his mother is dying, he adds “don’t blame me for that.” Walcott is emphasizing that, although Gros Jean and Mi-Jean both died at the hands of the Devil, not all death is the Devil’s fault. Death itself is not inherently evil, but merely a feature of life. Although watching his mother die is horrible, Ti-Jean’s great victory comes when he sings a song of thankfulness even as she fades away. This is a moment of true wisdom, because he is able to find beauty in the tragedy of death, and to see that the world keeps going even in the face of mortality. It is for this same reason that the Bolom makes his request for life, and celebrates, “I am born, I shall die! I am born, I shall die! O the wonder, and pride of it?” By the end of the play, the Bolom realizes that life, with all its suffering, is a wonderful gift, while immortality, which is smooth and devoid of feeling, is only a curse.
