In Chapter 5 Culler presents many interesting rhetorical and poetic techniques. Many of these techniques can be found within the two poems that are the subject of our first paper. Of all of the techniques presented I feel that the metaphors presented in Derek Walcott’s “The Sea is History” stand out the most to me. One particular metaphor that resonates has to be where Walcott compares the sea to a locked “grey vault”.  I feel that this metaphor is so strong because of the visual that it conjures as well as the deep unknown of which it implies.  When we think of the deep expanse of the sea we are often struck with the archetypal feeling of mystery that the sea gives. The ocean is vast, seemingly everything and nothing all at once. There are many parts of the sea that have not been explored and these areas remained somewhat “sealed” in this unending “grey vault” of the sea. Hidden away waiting to be excavated.  This analogy serves as the perfect allegory for the horrors of the middle passage, trans-atlantic slave trade and colonial Black history as a whole. Many of our stories lie un-discovered both figuratively and literally in the sea.

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