The Character of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

The Character of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest

Caliban is one of the most interesting of Shakespeare’s characters. For centuries, scholars have puzzled over the meaning and importance of this central character. Who or what is this creature? Is he a man or a beast (Peterson, p.2)? Most of the people who have debated this question take the question itself at face value. Caliban is either a man or a beast. The other characters in the play dismiss him as a "poisonous slave," "savage," and "hag-seed" (Act 1, Scene 2), but that does not mean that the reader must do so as well. Let us take a closer look at Caliban the individual and evaluate the question of his humanity. In the end, I think we will see that Caliban is just as human as the other characters in the play.

The first charge against Caliban is his shape. Prospero beckons him come by shouting, "What ho! Slave, Caliban!/ Thou earth, thou, speak!...Come thou tortoise!" Prospero does not even deign to place him among humankind; instead he is called "earth" as if he is part of the very ground-- the dirt that Prospero rules. Later, Trinculo calls him "A strange fish" and Stephano refers to him as a "monster of the isle with four legs." (2,2) Indeed, Caliban is never spoken of without some dehumanizing adjective added to the address. I would, however like to challenge the notion of his ugliness. During Shakespeare's day, there was a very narrow, very specific concept of beauty. For example, a woman was usually considered most beautiful if she was very fair. This showed that she was not exposed to the sun through any type of common labor and thus signified her gentility. To most of Elizabethan England, this concept of beauty was the only concept of beaut...

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...ight not all be good ones, are, nevertheless, very human ones. In fact, most of Shakespeare's characters exhibit attributes far worse than Caliban's, yet their humanity is ever called into question. Consider Iago of Othello. Iago exhibited a startling lack of redeeming qualities, yet he was never called a monster. The only reason that Caliban should be called a "monster" lies in the only way he differs from the other characters-- his appearance. It is a shame that, while a modern audiences may question the treatment of Caliban, they do not often question the reason behind it, and by failing to do so, they, along with Prospero become slaves to their own preconceptions. Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall encompassed the lesson that we must learn from Caliban. They said, "By enslaving Caliban, we enslave ourselves. Only when we free Caliban will we free ourselves."