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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Letter’s Home: Correspondence, 1951-1963 (1975) shows Plath’s response to change in her life as an adul...
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If you worship money and things- if they are where you tap real meaning in life-
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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)
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That evidence was clear Monday as Redbox, the nation's largest DVD rental company, agreed to spend up to $100 million to acquire Blockbuster-branded DVD kiosks operated by its largest rival, NCR Corp., adding about 9,000 machines to its existing 35,400 (LA times 2012).
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In this whimsical play, Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, after being supplanted of his dukedom by his brother, arrives on an island. He frees a spirit named Ariel from a spell and in turn makes the spirit his slave. He also enslaves a native monster named Caliban. These two slaves, Caliban and Ariel, symbolize the theme of nature versus nurture. Caliban is regarded as the representation of the wild; the side that is usually looked down upon. Although from his repulsive behavior, Caliban can be viewed as a detestable beast of nature, it can be reasonably inferred that Shakespeare’s intent was to make Caliban a sympathetic character.
While in High school, her story “And Summer Will Not Come Again” was published in the “Seventeen Again magazine”. In 1950, Sylvia Graduated from Bradford Senior High School first in her class. Right after high school, Plath was published nationally in “The Christian Sc...
The Tempest. Arden Shakespeare, 1997. Print. Third Series Smith, Hallet Darius. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Tempest; A Collection of Critical Essays, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Shakespeare, William, and Robert Woodrow Langbaum. The Tempest: With New and Updated Critical Essays and A Revised Bibliography. New York, NY, USA: Signet Classic, 1998. Print.