Pantomime Literary Elements

Comedy; Satire

English

The play is set a small hotel in post-colonial Tobago in the 1970s.

There is no narrator.

The tone is comic and sarcastic; the mood is silly and suspenseful.

The play's two protagonists, Harry Trewe and Jackson Phillip, act as each other's antagonist.

For Jackson, the major conflict is that he would like to live a life of peace but is forced to entertain the whims of his moody employer. The major conflict for Harry is that he wants to move past the sorrows of his life in England but is unwilling to address his grief.

The play reaches its climax when Harry admits that he wanted to stage Robinson Crusoe again because his more-talented ex-wife humiliated him the first time by making him play Friday while she played Crusoe.

Harry uses understatement when he refers to his wife leaving him after having killed their son in a drunk-driving accident as a "little matter."

The most overt allusion in the play is to Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, whose story provides the basis for Harry's pantomime.

When poking fun at the English language, Jackson draws Harry's attention to the paradox inherent in the phrase "I stand corrected," which one can say even while sitting down.

Jackson uses parallelism—successive verbal constructions—with the lines, "If I does hammer sarcastic, you does clap sarcastic," and, "Monkey see, monkey do."

When Jackson tells Harry, "You drive so careful you make your car nervous," he is personifying Harry's car, pretending that an inanimate object is capable of human nervousness.

Walcott frequently uses dramatic asides to have Jackson speak his thoughts for the audience's benefit while Harry remains oblivious.