34 pages • 1 hour read
A Tempest
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Race, Power, and Exploitation
In his adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the playwright Aimé Césaire addresses the complex dynamics that exist between individuals of different races within the context of colonialism. Prospero, as a white colonizer, represents all European colonizers who invade other countries and exploit their people and resources. Ariel and Caliban, Prospero’s slaves, are mulatto and black, respectively, and they represent the complicated experience of the individuals whose lands have been seized by Europeans.
As a Martinican and a co-founder of the Négritude movement, Césaire has an anti-colonialist stance that is as steadfast as his belief in the need for people of African descent to cultivate pride in their black identity. In Africa, only two countries were able to resist European colonization, Ethiopia and Liberia; in the Caribbean, all islands came under French, Spanish, Dutch, or British rule. France colonized Césaire’s own Martinique in the 17th century, so European exploitation was well-established by the time Césaire and his fellow intellectuals developed Négritude in the 1930s.
Throughout the play, Ariel and Caliban pressure Prospero to release them from slavery. Ariel’s pleas for freedom are strategic: He acknowledges Prospero’s power and appeals to Prospero’s conscience. Ariel, a mulatto, is a shape-shifter; his ability to alter his appearance and to accommodate different kinds of social interactions symbolizes the double bind that characterizes the mulatto experience. As a person of mixed race, Ariel does not fit into either the white world of Prospero nor the black world of Caliban. While Ariel seeks a peaceful way to gain his freedom, Caliban chooses aggression and violence. As a black man in the play, he is subjected to cruel insults, patronizing comments, and brazen disregard; he is accused of lewdness towards Miranda. When Caliban finds he can no longer tolerate Prospero’s dehumanizing behavior, he declares war, identifying himself with Malcolm X and asserting his deep connections to nature as his power.
Leadership and Usurpation
The leaders in the play either have had their power usurped at one time or run the risk of being usurped, a choice that reveals Césaire’s understanding of the fickle nature of power. Prospero lost his dukedom and his lands to his brother Antonio and the king Alonso, but he gained an island when he seized it from Caliban. As well, King Alonso is vulnerable to usurpation; his brother Sebastian and Antonio conspire to murder him in his sleep so that Sebastian can take the throne of Naples. Even Stephano, who drunkenly declares that he is now king as Alonso must have drowned, is challenged by Trinculo.
In all of these scenarios, the playwright suggests that one specific individual is not entitled to the highest positions of leadership. Monarchs, whose power is passed down through generations, are not necessarily the best, most noble individuals deserving of power, as evidenced by Antonio’s underhandedness, Alonso’s thievery, and Prospero’s racism. Through the decisions and behaviors of these three noblemen, Césaire equate acts of colonialism with acts of usurpation.
Césaire also comments on the fact that many Europeans justified colonialism by suggesting that God desired them to share their beliefs with the rest of the world. By introducing the Yoruban trickster god Eshu, Césaire reminds the audience that the Christian God is a Western god. Like the colonists of Africa, the Caribbean, and other continents, Eshu arrives uninvited and disrupts a harmonious situation. In reality, Césaire asserts, power is amoral; leaders can use their power for good or for evil, as evidenced by Gonzalo’s counsel to Alonso, advising respectful behavior towards the native residents of the island on which they shipwreck.
Chaos and Order
The play begins with disorder as the ship on which the gentlemen travel battles a storm and eventually shipwrecks on Prospero’s island. Disoriented and weak, the survivors of the shipwreck encounter more confusion and chaos as they meet the residents of the island: the noblemen encounter elves and nymphs who bear food, Stephano and Trinculo encounter Caliban, and Ferdinand encounters Miranda, whom he believes to be a goddess.
Throughout the play, supernatural elements contrast with natural elements, while the strange exoticism of the island landscape contrasts with the orderly European world from which the gentlemen come. Against this chaotic backdrop, Caliban plans a revolution to destabilize Prospero’s civilization, while Prospero decides to leave the island for the civilized world of his old home country. At the end of the play, Prospero changes his mind and decides to stay on the island to protect his civilization. Prospero’s decision restores order on one level, as his choice to remain on the island ensures the status quo; on another level, his decision to stay on the island ensures that the intense conflict between him and Caliban will continue.
As the conflicts between the characters in the play intensify and abate, the appearance of order disappears and reappears. At the engagement party for Miranda and Ferdinand, for example, the noblemen attend as planned, as do the Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. The event is civilized and peaceful until Eshu, the Yoruban trickster god, appears to disrupt the party. He is uninvited, just as any colonizing force that interferes with another nation is doing so uninvited. In contrast to colonizing forces, however, Eshu leaves the celebration peacefully, choosing to leave order in his wake rather than disorder.
Unlock all 34 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
