Paper plan: For my final research paper, I am planning on using my Discovery 2 post about “The Sea is History” by David Walcott where I analyzed how the poem uses extensive Biblical knowledge and references to depict the sea as containing even forgotten human history. I am planning on connecting this discovery to the week 10 reading by Eric Paul Roorda, where I wrote about terracentrism and the human tendency to base our worldviews around land-based narratives. I am planning on connecting these two works by discussing how the poem points out that human creations and history are only temporary moments in an infinite timeline, despite them seeming so strong and powerful at their time, however the ocean actually is forever, and that is the human fallacy of overestimating the greatness of land that Roorda’s work points out. Based on my feedback, I can also connect Steve Mentz’s ideas of how this fallacy is perpetuated by human’s language and way we chose to frame our worldviews.

Thesis: In David Walcott’s “The Sea is History,” the poem’s extensive use of biblical allusions and oceanic imagery exposes how human history, no matter how powerful it seems, is ultimately temporary and easily forgotten on land, a claim that aligns with Eric Paul Roorda’s critique of terracentrism by revealing the human mistake of centering our worldview on land-based narratives instead of recognizing the ocean as the deeper and more enduring archive of human experience.

In much of the literature that we have read including recently The Deep many of the merfolk/mermaids deal with alot of traumatic life changing events.Many of the characters either reflect their stories outcomes by tragic consequences that have happened to them or life changing things such as evolving into higher beings.I would like to do research of ptsd and use of mermaids to argue the benefits of acknowledging grief and processing it.

This story about Aganju and Yemaja shows how Yoruba mythology depicts creation as something born out of both unnatural circumstances and transformation. The story makes it clear that Yemaja’s historical significance to the Yoruba people comes from her suffering and struggles. When she resists Orungan, “she fled from the place” and her aggressor who was also her son, and it is precisely this act of oppression and violence that becomes the source of divine creation. The moment her body breaks open, the story describes how “her body immediately began to swell in a fearful manner,” a phrase that depicts her transformation not as peaceful or beautiful, but as painful and violent. This specific description supports the idea that Yoruba mythology acknowledges the reality that creation and life can emerge from hardship and rupture. Her suffering is not erased, but instead, it becomes sacred and allowed for further gods and goddesses to exist. This is an example of Yoruba representation of women and creation as well. Women go through suffering and pain to bring life into the world, just like Yamaja. The details of how the lagoons started flowing from her breasts also promote the idea of female reproduction.

The passage also reveals how the Yoruba view water as significant in their culture. Yemaja is introduced as someone who “presides over ordeals by water” and is the “mother of fish.” This suggests how water has a deeper significance than merely being a physical feature, as there are indeed “ordeals” that need to be watched over. This makes it even more meaningful how the stream that birthed so many other gods and goddesses flowed from her body. Creation is definitely an ordeal. This also portrays emotional pain as not weakness, but a creative force bringing forth something greater.

Derek Walcott’s “The Sea Is History” is a beautiful piece of work with an urgent lesson that the sea is not background scenery; it is an archive that holds and speaks history. Walcott teaches this by shifting among voices and by turning physical seascape details into evidence. Listening to the ocean, and to the people who know it, becomes a method for doing history, which is exactly the work environmental humanities asks us to do.

The first voice in the poem sounds like an official examiner: “Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs?” The question treats history as something that can be pointed to in stone or on paper. Walcott then flips the power dynamic with a second voice, a local answer that is calm and exact: “Sirs, in that grey vault. The sea. The sea / has locked them up. The sea is History.” Notice the steps in that reply. “Sirs” politely resists the authority of the examiner. “Grey vault” renames the ocean as a protected archive, not a blank horizon. The short, repeated sentences, “The sea. The sea.”—slow the rhythm and force the reader to look. Finally, “has locked them up” suggests both safekeeping and imprisonment, raising a hard truth: the ocean preserves the past, but it also keeps it out of easy reach. This exchange shows how multiple voices matter. The examiner’s narrow demand produces a local correction, and the lesson becomes clear: if you only look for statues, you will miss the records written in water, salt, and tide.

Walcott then backs the claim with material evidence. The poem does not just say the sea remembers; it shows how it remembers: “Bone soldered by coral to bone.” The verb “soldered” is precise and unsettling. It is a workshop word, a human technique for fusing metal, now applied to bodies under pressure and time. Coral, usually a sign of life, acts here as the binding agent. In one short line, Walcott compresses human remains, marine growth, and craft vocabulary. The image does three things at once: it proves that the environment is a physical ledger; it rejects clean, heroic versions of the past; and it makes the reader feel the cost in the very texture of the reef. A close reading of this line is enough to see the poem’s lesson: the ocean carries the archive in its own living matter.

Finally, the poem turns from claim to practice through a guiding voice: “strop on these goggles, I’ll guide you there myself.” The imperative “strop” (to sharpen) does double duty. It literally prepares a tool and metaphorically sharpens perception. “Goggles” make the method explicit: if the records are underwater, then research requires gear, time, and humility. The promise “I’ll guide you” also matters. It centers local knowledge and embodied learning over distant judgment. Rather than staying with the examiner’s demands, the poem puts the reader in the water, where careful looking replaces abstract debate. In other words, Walcott doesn’t just argue that the sea is an archive. He hands us a method for reading it.

Across these moments, one message threads the poem: history is co-authored by environment and people, and we can hear it only by honoring more than one voice. The examiner teaches us what a narrow standard looks like. The local reply teaches us where to look instead. The imperative to “strop on these goggles” teaches us how to look closely, physically, with guidance. This is not just a poem about the ocean. It is a set of instructions hiding in plain sight. If we follow them, reefs become records, shorelines become shelves, and currents become witnesses. That is the poem’s lesson and its challenge: to practice a history that listens to the sea that has been keeping the files all along.