Duality Between Nature and Society in The Tempest
One of the essential themes of The Tempest is the duality between nature and society. This is made evident through the character of Caliban: the disfigured fish-like creature that inhabits the island upon which the play takes place. Caliban lacks civility because he was born on the island deprived of any social or spiritual morality other than nature and instinct. He is literally man untamed. Caliban is not monstrous simply for the sake of being frightening; his ghastly appearance is intended to literally depict the essential differences between civilization and natural instinct.
Caliban represents man, instinct, and nature in their rawest forms. Part fish, part man, but not really either because he is more mentally sophisticated than a fish, but devoid of any characteristics generally associated with civilized beings. He displays promise in becoming civilized, but eventually it becomes evident that it is impossible to fully tame a wild animal, which is what Caliban essentially is. Caliban is more of an animal rather than a monster. While he is labeled a monster throughout the play due to his appearance, he is in fact an animal. He is not inherently evil or malicious, but relies on his own instincts and skills that he has learned to adapt to his surrounding and survive. What is vital to survival in society is not necessarily important in nature; and vice versa.
In nature only the most basic aspects of survival are required. Nature is all about survival, at any cost. Society is not. Civilization was developed out of convenience with the mental and physical skills of man. It h...
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Bibliography
Primary Texts
William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Frank Kermode, with an introduction by Frank Kermode, (Arden, 1964)
Montaigne, Selected Essays of Montaigne, trans. John Florio (1603) ed.Walter Kaiser, with an introduction by Walter Kaiser, (Riverside, 1964)
Secondary Texts
Eric Cheyfitz, The Poetics of Imperialism: Translation and Colonization from The Tempest to Tarzan, (Oxford University Press, 1991)
Jeffrey Knapp, An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest, (University of California Press, 1992)
Gail Kern Paster, 'Montaigne, Dido and The Tempest: How Came that Widow in?',Shakespeare Quarterly, 35, no.3 (1984)
Deborah Willis, 'Shakespeare's Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism', Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 29, no.2, (1989)
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If you worship money and things- if they are where you tap real meaning in life-
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"Go Team Margot! When their one-year-old daughter Margot was diagnosed with a rare form of leukaemia Yaser and Victoria Martini were desperate to help her. Now Stephen Fry and David Tennant have joined their internet search to find a suitable bone marrow donor, says Susannah Butter." London Evening Standard [London, England] 27 Jan. 2014: 26. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.
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Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1997.
Dutton, R., & Howard, J.E. (2003). A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works.(p. 9) Maiden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
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In men and women alike it first betrayed itself by the emergence of certain tumours in the groin or armpits, some of which grew as large as a common apple, others as an egg...From the two said parts of the body this deadly gavocciolo soon began to propagate and spread itself in all directions indifferently; after which the form of the malady began to change, black spots or livid making their appearance in many cases on the arm or the thigh or elsewhere, now few and large, now minute and numerous. As the gavocciolo had been and still was infallible token of approaching death, such also were these spots on whomsoever they showed themselves. (Boccaccio 3)
When Caliban is first introduced in the play it is as an animal, a lazy beast that tried to rape Prospero’s daughter, Miranda. Prospero wastes no time referring to him as, “Thou poisonous slave, got by the de...
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... Another instance that Caliban is evil is the fact that he tried to rape Miranda, Prospero’s daughter as stated by Barbara Fuchs in her article Conquering Islands: Contextualizing the Tempest where it says, “Caliban’s attack on Prospero’s daughter once more genders the colonizing impulses” (61). This suggests rape and it is not inhuman and it shows that Miranda is not the first woman who this has happened to. It’s not right, it’s evil. Caliban’s character in this book is horrible in the things that he does, he starting off has an evil monster that was born from an evil parents and he goes around causing trouble wherever he goes.
Caliban whom we are told is “not honour’d with a human shape,” (1.2.419) is the son of Sycorax who inhabited the island Prospero was banished to. After the death of his mother, Sycorax, Caliban falls under the rule of Prospero and becomes one his servants. Caliban is very different from Ariel in the fact that while Ariel is pleased to serve under Prospero’s rule, Caliban is not. In fact, we find out that Caliban is far from happy to be Prospero’s servant and even plots with two other men to end Prospero’s life. As we discussed in class Caliban is also more of an angry individual than what Ariel seems to be and this comes from the fact that Caliban believes he is the rightful king of the island and that Prospero had robbed him of what was his, which we find out when he says that he is “subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island” (3.2.40-41). Ariel, who we are told in act one, scene two was the old servant of Caliban’s mother Syco...