When Caliban declares, "This island's mine, by Sycorax, my mother" 1. Caliban's also feisty and challenges Prospero's authority, which we can't help but admire, especially when Caliban points out that learning Prospero's language gave him the ability to "curse" his tormenter.
Regardless of how repulsive Caliban may be, he's also the character who delivers some of the most beautiful and stunning speeches in the play. Did you check out the scene where Caliban describes the beauty and wonders of the island? Here's a sample:. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices That, if I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; 3.
A lot of literary critics say that Caliban's name is an anagram or at least a play on the word can[n]ibal, a term derived from "carib" as in the Carib bean , which became a European term used to describe flesh-eaters.
If this is the case, then Caliban's name associates him with the kinds of "savage" man-eaters that Europeans were reading about in travel literature when Shakespeare wrote the play. It's also possible that Caliban's name may be a play on the Romany word "Cauliban," which means "black" or something associated with blackness. This makes some sense, especially given that Caliban is associated with darkness throughout the play. Prospero calls his slave "thou earth" 1. By the way, literary critic Kim F.
Hall points out that Caliban's association with "darkness and dirt" is the opposite of Miranda's association with purity and light. For a lot of critics, Caliban is symbolic of what happened to victims of European colonization in the centuries after Shakespeare wrote The Tempest.
Vaughan do the best job of summing up this argument:. Caliban stands for countless victims of European imperialism and colonization. Like Caliban so the argument goes , colonized peoples were disinherited, exploited, and subjugated. Like him, they learned a conqueror's language and perhaps that conqueror's values.
Like him, they endured enslavement and contempt by European usurpers and eventually rebelled. Like him, they were torn between their indigenous culture and the culture superimposed on it by their conquerors.
Shakespeare's Caliban: A Cultural History , This interpretation of Caliban can be pretty powerful and socially relevant, especially in film and stage productions where Caliban is portrayed as a colonized, New World subject. Yet, it's also important to remember, as Vaughan and Vaughan point out, that this "interpretation of Caliban is symbolic for what he represents to the observer, not for what Shakespeare may have had in mind.
Regardless of whether or not we read Caliban as a victim of colonial injustice, he's most definitely a slave and, in some ways, the play suggests he was born to be one. Miranda or Prospero, depending on which edition of the play you're reading says as much when she points out that she helped teach Caliban language:.
Prospero tells Miranda to look upon Ferdinand, and Miranda, who has seen no humans in her life other than Prospero and Caliban, immediately falls in love. Ferdinand is similarly smitten and reveals his identity as the prince of Naples. Prospero is pleased that they are so taken with each other but decides that the two must not fall in love too quickly, and so he accuses Ferdinand of merely pretending to be the prince of Naples. When he tells Ferdinand he is going to imprison him, Ferdinand draws his sword, but Prospero charms him so that he cannot move.
Miranda attempts to persuade her father to have mercy, but he silences her harshly. This man, he tells her, is a mere Caliban compared to other men. Prospero leads the charmed and helpless Ferdinand to his imprisonment. Secretly, he thanks the invisible Ariel for his help, sends him on another mysterious errand, and promises to free him soon.
Unlike Ariel and Miranda, however, Caliban attempts to use language as a weapon against Prospero just as Prospero uses it against Caliban. He insists that the island is his but that Prospero took it from him by flattering Caliban into teaching him about the island and then betraying and enslaving him. We sense that there is more at stake here than a mere shouting-match between Prospero and Caliban. Prospero tells Miranda that the time has come for her to learn the story of her past and how they came to live on this island: Twelve years ago Prospero was Duke of Milan.
Engaged in his books, Prospero withdrew more and more into his studies, leaving the management of his state to his brother Antonio. Eventually, with the help of King Alonso and his brother Sebastian - inveterate enemies of Prospero - Antonio usurped the dukedom for himself. Prospero and his baby daughter Miranda were put to sea in a rotten boat.
Father and daughter landed on a distant island once ruled by the witch Sycorax but now inhabited only by her son, Caliban, and Ariel, a spirit in addition the assorted lesser spirits of the island.
For the past twelve years Prospero has ruled the island and its two inhabitants by the use of magic arts derived from his studies. His daughter Miranda has grown up seeing no other human being.
Prospero tells Miranda that fortune has brought his enemies close to the island and that he has used his powers to raise the storm which shipwrecked them. He assures her that no real harm has come to the survivors.
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