ti jean and his brothers good vs evil essay

Repeating Islands

News and commentary on caribbean culture, literature, and the arts, ti jean and his brothers: an allegory on the story of the caribbean.

Al Creighton’s Arts on Sunday for The Stabroek News .

In the folklore of the Eastern Caribbean island of St Lucia there is a popular character known as Ti Jean. He is a folk hero and his story is known in the island’s mythology. Part of the lore is the widespread belief that the configurations visible on the face of the full moon are pictures that take the shape of a man with a bundle of wood on his head and a little dog following behind him. It is said that Ti Jean is that famous ‘man in the moon’ and there is a story about how he got there.

He was a young boy who had to fight against the Devil, but despite his youth, size and impoverishment, he used his wits and cunning as well as the elements of surprise and daring, to defeat his powerful and intimidating foe. As a reward for that achievement, God elevated him and put him in the moon as a guide to the world. That is known as a myth of origin – a story used in folk belief to explain the existence of things encountered in the universe. In this case it explains how the man came to be in the moon.

Additionally, it is a celebration of the triumph of good over evil that is found universally in folk tales, including fairy tales and many religious myths. In St Lucia, it is a victory on behalf of the people, most of whom are members of the impoverished class of peasants, village folk and workers. These tales of triumph sustain them in their daily struggle against poverty and a socio-political existence as a people without power, without voice and representation. They gain power and liberation vicariously through mythology and folk heroes with the motif of the victory of good over evil.

The name Ti Jean is Creole French Patois for Little John – John is a common name and this character is a mere boy – so called because he is the youngest of three brothers, and demonstrates how a common small man without economic, social or political power can triumph over the prevailing adversity. He is the equivalent of ‘the everyman’ in Caribbean society with whom all can identify, and the story is the struggle of the Caribbean people for success.

This folk tale and its hero were used by the late St Lucian poet and playwright Derek Walcott, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, to write the play Ti Jean and His Brothers, a prescribed text for the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate English B (literature) examination until 2023.

In Walcott’s play there are three brothers, sons of a poor woman living on the edge of a mountain forest. The Devil, who lives nearby, has grown tired of his immortality and is bored with his triumphs and activities. He has an overwhelming desire to know what it feels like to be mortal; he wants to experience fear, anger, laughter and human emotions. So he challenges the brothers to a contest with him, one by one, to see who can succeed in making the other angry. If the brothers win they will be rewarded, but if they get angry first they will be devoured. The two older brothers, Gros Jean and Mi Jean fail, but the youngest, Ti Jean, demonstrates the characteristics for success and beats the Devil.

Apart from a plot whose source is a West Indian folk tale, in creating the play, Walcott drew on a mixture of many other forms and traditions, including the fairy tale, Classical Greek drama, comedy, tragedy, the fable, Caribbean folklore characters and talking animals.

The fairy tale has had a striking effect on West Indian folk tales and in this case Walcott enriched his drama with such traditions. Prominent among these is the very common motif of a man or woman with three sons who one by one ventures out into the world to seek his fortune. In this tale there is the fairy tale factor of absentation – their father is dead, then one by one they leave home to take up the Devil’s challenge. Then there are donor characters who are willing to render assistance if the hero of the story passes the test and possesses the qualities necessary for success.

As borrowed from the fairy tale, both older brothers Gros Jean and Mi Jean, fail that test. They are arrogant and conceited. Gros Jean is strong – he has “an arm of iron” and a false sense of invincibility, so he scoffs at the idea that he could need help from the weak little animals or any advice from anyone. With this arrogance he plots his downfall because the animals render him no assistance and even Papa Bois takes advantage of his hasty dismissal of anything that does not possess his physical might, including wisdom from an old man. Papa Bois, who in this play is really the Devil in disguise, laughs at the ease with which Gros Jean falls into his trap.

Next is Mi Jean who has nothing but contempt for the animals who he insults and therefore gets no assistance from them. In his conceit, he considers himself superior because of his knowledge and learning, which are in fact superficial leaving him unintelligent and easy prey to the Devil’s traps.

On the contrary, Ti Jean has the good qualities that allow him to pass the test. He makes friends with the animals, complimenting them and being humble and civil. Since the conquest of good over evil is a fairy tale motif, Ti Jean’s humane attitudes fit in here, and the animals give him every assistance and support. As in the fairy tales, the youngest sibling is the kindest, most intelligent and genuine, so Ti Jean succeeds where his brothers fail.

But he also makes full use of his wits and at every turn he outsmarts the Devil. Success for the hero by use of wit and brain power is not only a motif in fairy tales, it is also common in Caribbean folk tales – Anansi is the prime example of this. These forms also share the appearance of talking animals, also found in Classical Greek plays. There are Greek comedies with a chorus of animals, some of the comedies of Aristophanes have titles like The Birds and The Frogs (Walcott used a frog as his narrator). But animals persist in West Indian folk tales and this is therefore also common in the local storytelling tradition.

Walcott, however, had other intentions above the performance of a folktale. Much of what he did with these forms was symbolic and used as vehicles to achieve other purposes, such as the dramatisation of themes. Among these is the Caribbean struggle through its history against slavery, oppression, colonialism and poverty. There is the struggle of Caribbean people for liberation and independence.

In Ti Jean and His Brothers, the Devil disguises himself as a white planter and this is symbolic. That planter is an archetypal character representing plantation society and the coloniser class. Presenting him as the Devil suggests the evil at the head of the system of slavery, the entire history of racism, cruelty, exploitation and inhumanity and the reduction of a people to poverty.

The treatment of Gros Jean becomes important here. The planter perpetually infuriates Gros Jean by pretending to forget his name. This is a persistent weapon to drive him to anger whereupon he would lose the bet, but more than that it was a longstanding ploy under slavery and neo-colonialism. Non-recognition of the names of the enslaved was a known practice to strip them of their identity which would have given them a certain amount of cultural power, which for the planter was a threat against his security. The enslaved were given their owners’ names, Christian names, or names taken from Greek or Roman classicism and mockingly applied. The removal of names was as much a racist slur as it was a form of oppression and a weapon used by the Devil in the play.

When the Frog sneezes, using the utterance “Aeschylus-me!”, there is humour. He is saying “excuse me”, but it was also Walcott’s acknowledgement of borrowing from the Greek playwrights. Aeschylus was a tragedian, and Walcott introduced some elements of the Greek tragedy in his treatment of the Devil, who comes over at times as the tragic hero. There is an almost sympathetic study of a great tragic character. It is a humanisation of the immortal Satan and a comment on human weakness.

The play takes on Christianity with its frequent use of Christian mythology and the repetition of the ironic statement when Ti Jean says looking at the Devil’s face is like gazing at the blinding face of God, and the Devil responds: “It is hard to distinguish us”. Walcott teased the Christian with statements that the Devil “owns half the world”, that he and God are two equal emperors. But worse, Christianity often comes over as indistinguishable from colonial impoverishment of the people in the forest and the villages.

That is why Ti Jean and His Brothers is often describ-ed as an allegory, the disguise for a hard-hitting com-mentary on poverty and persistent colonisation of poor people, and the struggle of the Caribbean nations for independence.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

One thought on “ Ti Jean And His Brothers: An allegory on the story of the Caribbean ”

I must say you have written a great article. The way you have described everything is phenomenal.

official site

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

• No category

ti-jean and his brothers - handout

Related documents

Add this document to collection(s)

You can add this document to your study collection(s)

Add this document to saved

You can add this document to your saved list

Suggest us how to improve StudyLib

(For complaints, use another form )

Input it if you want to receive answer

Ti Jean And His Brothers

“Ti-Jean and His Brothers”is a very rich play in all the aspects one would expect. There is comedy and tragedy as well as the effects of music, sound and light. In the play we also see how the english language has evolved in such a way as to complement the culture of the caribbean. Ti-Jean and His Brothers is an engaging and enjoyable play. The comical aspects of the play permeate the entire story. The comedy mainly comes into play during the interaction between the Devil and each of the three brothers.

When Gros Jean is working for the planter the Devil, as the Planter, deliberately goads Gros jean by calling him by all sorts of names except his own. Soon after the Planter enters he says : “Thats right Gros Chien, Gros Jean, Gros Jean, Sorry”. The Planter goes from calling Gros Jean, Joe, to Mac, to Gros Chien, to Charley, back to Mac, then to Horace and then francis, Joe again, Henry and ends with Benton then Mervin near the end of the scene.

“You’re worth more to me, Benton than fifty men. So you should smoke, after all. And such a pleasant disposition, always smiling. Just Like a skull. But Remember Mervin, I’d like you to try and finish this, you see I have a contract and the harder you work the more I . . . “. The humour would be more apparent if one was actually visualising the way it would be acted on stage. The Planter would probably say the different names in an absent minded fashion while Gros Jean gets more and more frustrated.

Proficient in: Communication

“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”

Gros Jean would probably feel as if his identity was in jeopardy. Identity is very important to Gros Jean, this is illustrated by the various references he makes to his strength, something he considers integral to his identity. Unlike Gros Jean, Mi Jean is not worried so much about the questioning of his identity as he is about the questioning of his learning. The author, Derek Walcott, uses the pompous, self important attitude Mi Jean has towards his learning to create comedy. Mi Jean is very …

Cite this page

Ti Jean And His Brothers. (2019, Dec 05). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/

"Ti Jean And His Brothers." PaperAp.com , 5 Dec 2019, https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/

PaperAp.com. (2019). Ti Jean And His Brothers . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/ [Accessed: 22 May. 2024]

"Ti Jean And His Brothers." PaperAp.com, Dec 05, 2019. Accessed May 22, 2024. https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/

"Ti Jean And His Brothers," PaperAp.com , 05-Dec-2019. [Online]. Available: https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/. [Accessed: 22-May-2024]

PaperAp.com. (2019). Ti Jean And His Brothers . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-ti-jean-and-his-brothers/ [Accessed: 22-May-2024]

• A Discussion on Chris Kyle and His Life in the US Navy and His Work Ethics Pages: 1 (296 words)
• Twice in His Life Experienced a Divorce of His Parents Pages: 5 (1251 words)
• A Review of Edgar Allan Poe's Poem on His Love for His Lost Wife, Annabel Lee Pages: 2 (347 words)
• Jean Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft Pages: 8 (2252 words)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau and The Social Contract Pages: 3 (720 words)
• A View on the Existentialism and Human Freedom by Jean Paul Sartre Pages: 3 (665 words)
• Jean Kilbourne's Article Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt: Advertising And Violence Pages: 3 (827 words)
• Original Jean Valjean Pages: 2 (310 words)
• Jean Watson Theory Of Human Caring Pages: 4 (957 words)
• Jean Michel Basquiat Essay Pages: 4 (1053 words)

• Veritas News
• Faith & Culture
• Join the Veritas

“Ti-Jean and His Brothers: A Caribbean Folk Tale” performance at ENC

ENC Theatre Department’s upcoming play “Ti-Jean and His Brothers: A Caribbean Folk Tale” can be considered a fable or a parable, but it is ultimately a moral-seeking piece of theatrical art. It asks the hard questions of the audience, even if it comes across as a simple, entertaining story.

Written by Derek Walcott, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992, the play explores timeless themes (good vs. evil), spiritual themes (the role of God and the devil), and existential questions (What does it mean to be human?).

Set in the West Indies, the play explores the responses and faith of three brothers when they encounter an enticing offer from the devil: relief from their hardship and obtaining their hearts’ desires.

Sophomore Toan Nguyen, playing the character of Ti-Jean, offers insight into the multi-layered dimension of the play by stating that while the play certainly starts out as a simple story of the characters trying to beat the devil, it transcends into a lesson about how we “as humans have to figure out how to live with [the devil] in this world without falling victim to his desires.”

Senior RJ Barnett, playing the character of Mi-Jean, says that “the cast is so much fun to rehearse with and Tara is a terrific director. I think her vision for this production will come across in a special way.”

With Director Tara Brooke Watkins leading the endeavor, audiences can expect a thrilling experience. Using lush colors such as, “lime green, turquoise, tangerine, and watermelon” from Trinidadian Carnival tradition to highlight the characters and set, the play will be enmeshed in visual spectacle.

“Ti-Jean and His Brothers: A Caribbean Folk Tale” will appear Feb. 18-20 at 7:30 p.m. in the Cove Fine Arts Center. Tickets can be purchased in advance online at Brown Paper Tickets or at the box-office before the show.

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Disclosure Policy
• Refund and Returns Policy
• CSEC ENGLISH A & B SBA
• CSEC ENGLISH A EXAM OUTLINE 2018-2025
• CSEC English B 2023-2027 Texts, Poems, Short Stories
• CSEC English B Poems 2023-2027
• Password Reset
• [email protected]

CSEC English B -Section A Sample Questions- 2023 Exam

For each question in Sections A, B, and C, in addition to the 25 marks indicated for content and argument, 10 marks are allocated for language, organization and competence in the mechanics of writing.

SECTION A — DRAMA

Answer ONE question in this section.

2. “A dominant theme in Ti-Jean and His Brothers is good versus evil.” Write an essay in which you describe TWO incidents in which the conflict between good and evil is presented. In this essay, you must also discuss how the MAIN characters are affected in ONE of the incidents, and examine ONE technique that Walcott uses to present the theme of good versus evil in the play.  

One thought on “CSEC English B -Section A Sample Questions- 2023 Exam”

What is the answer for the essay in the tempest ?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Earl M. Kinkade

Customer Reviews

Ti-Jean and His Brothers

By derek walcott, ti-jean and his brothers irony, the devil’s song (dramatic irony).

At the end of the prologue, the Devil sings a song about eating the three Jean children. However, the audience already knows that Ti-Jean will defeat the Devil, because the animals introduce the plot of the story at the beginning of the play. The Devil’s song is therefore an example of dramatic irony, because we know that things will not go according to his plan.

Gros Jean’s Strength (Situational Irony)

Gros Jean believes that his strength will protect him from anything. However, his mother argues that his strength will always fail when it attempts to run up against death. Indeed, Gros Jean quickly loses to the Devil, and his strength doesn’t matter at all once he’s a corpse. Ironically, Gros Jean’s faith in his own strength is part of what leads him towards the Devil, his death, and ultimately, the loss of his strength.

Mi-Jean Speaking to the Old Man (Dramatic Irony)

Mi-Jean’s conversation with the old man is an example of dramatic irony. Mi-Jean notices that the old man has a hoof instead of a foot, but instead of recognizing its significance, he looks in his book, which tells him nothing. Led astray by the encyclopedia and the old man’s cunning, he forgets about the book entirely. Later, the old man even gives him a hint about his identity, and Mi-Jean rejects it, saying that the Devil wouldn’t give himself away so easily. Throughout this conversation, the audience knows the old man is the Devil. Mi-Jean’s belief in his own intelligence makes him look especially foolish throughout the scene, and heightens the irony of his ignorance regarding the old man’s real identity.

Mother’s Death (Situational Irony)

Mother’s death is an example of situational irony. Ti-Jean has spent the whole act trying to defeat the Devil. When he finally wins, he learns that his mother is dying, yet, ironically, this terrible calamity has nothing to do with the Devil. The enemy he has been focusing on has no power over the most tragic event Ti-Jean undergoes.

Ti-Jean and His Brothers Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Ti-Jean and His Brothers is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

There are not many female characters. Mother is the main one. Mother is a poor old woman who gradually loses all three of her sons over the course of the play. With each son, she pleads with them to be safe, but all but Ti-Jean ignore her advice....

What are two instances where a character appears proud and discuss how a character reacts to one of the instances described?

Check out GradeSaver's summary and analysis for Act I in the study guide for the novel. The study guide contains all of the information you need to formulate an answer for your question.

What is Gros-Jean’s response and attitude to his mother’s advice?

What advice are you referring to? Chapter?

Study Guide for Ti-Jean and His Brothers

Ti-Jean and His Brothers study guide contains a biography of Derek Walcott, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Ti-Jean and His Brothers
• Ti-Jean and His Brothers Summary
• Character List

Our Professional Writers Are Our Pride

EssayService boasts its wide writer catalog. Our writers have various fields of study, starting with physics and ending with history. Therefore we are able to tackle a wide range of assignments coming our way, starting with the short ones such as reviews and ending with challenging tasks such as thesis papers. If you want real professionals some of which are current university professors to write your essays at an adequate price, you've come to the right place! Hiring essay writers online as a newcomer might not be the easiest thing to do. Being cautious here is important, as you don't want to end up paying money to someone who is hiring people with poor knowledge from third-world countries. You get low-quality work, company owners become financial moguls, and those working for such an essay writing service are practically enduring intellectual slavery. Our writing service, on the other hand, gives you a chance to work with a professional paper writer. We employ only native English speakers. But having good English isn't the only skill needed to ace papers, right? Therefore we require each and every paper writer to have a bachelor's, master's, or Ph.D., along with 3+ years of experience in academic writing. If the paper writer ticks these boxes, they get mock tasks, and only with their perfect completion do they proceed to the interview process.

Essay writing help has this amazing ability to save a student’s evening. For example, instead of sitting at home or in a college library the whole evening through, you can buy an essay instead, which takes less than one minute, and save an evening or more. A top grade for homework will come as a pleasant bonus! Here’s what you have to do to have a new 100% custom essay written for you by an expert.

To get the online essay writing service, you have to first provide us with the details regarding your research paper. So visit the order form and tell us a paper type, academic level, subject, topic, number and names of sources, as well as the deadline. Also, don’t forget to select additional services designed to improve your online customer experience with our essay platform.

Once all the form fields are filled, submit the order form that will redirect you to a secure checkout page. See if all the order details were entered correctly and make a payment. Just as payment is through, your mission is complete. The rest is on us!

Enjoy your time, while an online essay writer will be doing your homework. When the deadline comes, you’ll get a notification that your order is complete. Log in to your Customer Area on our site and download the file with your essay. Simply enter your name on the title page on any text editor and you’re good to hand it in. If you need revisions, activate a free 14-30-day revision period. We’ll revise the work and do our best to meet your requirements this time.

• Exploratory
• Words to pages
• Pages to words

Ti-Jean and His Brothers

Derek walcott, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions, devil / planter/ old man.