TEMPEST Essay -- essays research papers

The Other in the Tempest In order to understand the characters in a play, we have to be able to distinguish what exactly makes them different. In the case of The Tempest, Caliban, the sub-human slave is governed largely by his senses, making him the animal that he is portrayed to be and Prospero is governed by conk mind, making him human. Caliban responds to nature as his instinct is to follow it. Prospero, on the another(prenominal) hand, follows the art of justifiable rule. raze though it is easy to start assessing The Tempest in view of a colonialist gaze, I have chosen instead to concentrate on viewing Caliban as the monster he is portrayed to be, due to other characters that are not human, but are treated in a more humane fashion than Caliban. Before we meet Caliban, we meet Ariel, Prosperos trust spirit. Even though Ariel is not human either, he is treated kindly and lovingly by his master who calls him my quaint Ariel. Caliban, on the other hand, is called a tortoise and a poisonous slave by Prospero. As Caliban enters in Act 1 Scene 2, we realise his fury at both Prospero and Miranda. He is rude and offend and Prospero replies with threats of torture. Prospero justifies his punishment of Caliban by his anger at the attempted rape of his daughter, something Caliban shows no remorse for. Miranda distinguishes herself from Caliban by calling him a thing most brutish and inadvertently, a thing that has only bad natures. She calls his speech gabble, but doesnt stop to wonder whether it was she that didnt understand him because she didnt know how to speak his language. Surely Caliban communicated verbally with his mother for the twelve years before Prospero killed her? It seems that Prospero and Miranda expect Caliban to be grateful for the knowledge of their language, but Caliban has just learned how to curse and justifies his anger by claiming rights to the island. Even though they obviously detest each other, Prospero needs him, as he tells Miranda We cannot miss him he does make our fire/Fetch in our wood, and serves in offices/That increase us, Caliban stays on because he is afraid of Prosperos artof such power, making Prospero the feared conqueror ad dictator. Prospero is the right duke of Milan and Caliban is the savage and deformed slave. They even off two different extremes on the social spectrum that of the natural ruler,... ...e will let Stephano rule- showing himself to be naturally ruled, not ruler. At the end of the play, when he recognises that his survival of the fittest of Stephano as ruler was foolish, it is not mental reasoning that has led him to this conclusion, but the evidence of his senses and experience. Caliban had mid enough to function as part of society, but grooming him to become part of that society cannot be abstract, like Prosperos failed attempt at educating him with Miranda Calibans education must be practical and hammered basis with his own senses. If the senses represent something natural and the mind represents an art like knowledge or in Prosperos case, magic, then we can say that Caliban represents Nature and Prospero Art. patch the need for control over nature is asserted continually, the ending suggests that art must ultimately come to terms with nature (hence Prosperos this thing of phantom I/Acknowledge mine) for while Calibans limitations are apparent, his wish to improve himself is promising, and his new relationship with Prospero seems to be more stable and more quieten than the resentment-filled and extremely uneasy jailer-prisoner/master-slave relationship shown earlier