SOURCE: Drake, Sandra E. “The Search for El Dorado: Conquest in Palace of the Peacock.” In Wilson Harris and the Modern Tradition: A New Architecture of the World, pp. 49–70. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986.

In the following essay, Drake explores the themes of conquest and desire in Palace of the Peacock.

Conquest is the greatest evil of soul humanity inflicts on itself and on nature.

—Wilson Harris, Explorations, p. 136

Palace of the Peacock, Harris's first novel, develops a version of the Caribbean Ur-myth. … Harris explores how the attempt to find love and self-fulfillment, when misconstrued as desire and conquest, becomes the source of both personal and social disaster. Conquest, which he has called “the greatest evil,” is the attempt to possess the object of desire or to attain a desired objective. Such possession is possible only if one assumes separation between subject and object. Thus the whole psychological and...