Caliban The Tempest Analysis

In Journal of the First Voyage to America, Christopher Columbus described his first journey to the New World: "Everything looked as green as in April in Andalusia. The melody of the birds was so exquisite that one was never willing to part from the sound, and the flocks of parrots obscured the heavens... A thousand different sorts of trees, with their fruit were to be met with, and of a wonderfully delicious odor." Europeans were intrigued by descriptions like these, detailing a land completely unlike anything they had ever heard of or seen before. Even the name "New World" implied a mysterious and fantastical place. The centuries following the “discovery” of the Americas were a time of great excitement. William Shakespeare, living in 17th

If this was true, however, Shakespeare would have portrayed Caliban, a symbol of the repressed native, as a much more innocent and sympathetic character. While Caliban does have a special connection to the island, evident by the poetic and heartfelt language he uses when describing it, he is not simply a helpless native being oppressed by an unreasonable colonizer. Prospero treats Caliban with kindness and respect at first, until Caliban attempted to “violate the honour of” Miranda, Prospero 's daughter and the symbol of purity in the play, by trying to have sexual intercourse with her. Caliban is also unapologetic about the incident, as shown in act I scene ii, in which he laughs at the matter and wishes Prospero had not stopped him so he could have “peopled else This isle with Calibans.” This paints Caliban as an immoral character that is undeserving of the audience’s sympathy. When people today look at the colonial period through a postcolonial lens, they find many things wrong morally with the treatment of natives. However, this was not the message Shakespeare was trying to convey in 1611 when he wrote the