Selena Lundy (684 words)

Selena Lundy
October 17, 2016
ENG 215
Professor Alveraz
Readings based on The Tempest
The three readings based on The Tempest all brought forward many ideas and concepts on how and why the play was the way that it was. Each reading on their own had ideas that we had discussed in one way or another in class. I have read essays from A Norton Critical Edition for another novel and English class and they were just as hard and confusing to read this time for The Tempest as they had been before. The readings were so heavy and thick and, despite the fact that they did make many goods points, I know for a fact that there were many more points that I probably missed from the lack of my full understanding.
In the essay by G. Wilson Knight, Knight focused on magic, how Prospero used it throughout the play, and what the island had to do with the magic that Prospero gained. Knight states that Prospero is able to have magic through the island and, as best as I can tell the island’s magic has a way with words and poetry. This gives us the indication that Prospero is nothing more than a man draining power from the island to do his bidding. He’s not as powerful as he and the others in the play think he is. On one hand, I agree where Knight is coming from, as Prospero doesn’t seem to have had any power when he was in his kingdom. That leads me to question the reasoning behind Prospero’s “magical” belongings like his staff and books. If the island was what really gave him magic, what use did he have for those? Where they just for show?
George Lamming wrote an essay about a topic that I hadn’t really thought of before too deeply. Caliban and Miranda had a bond. This bond came from both that of their friendship that most likely would have grown over the years, as the two of them were the only company the other had, and that they had the same kind of status when compared to Prospero. Neither knew their mother and both had no idea of the world outside of their island. This bond can change how we look at Miranda and Caliban and if we want to believe Prospero and Miranda when they say that Caliban intended to rape Miranda. Lamming continues to say that despite the fact that Miranda was able to fall in love with Ferdinand, her father probably didn’t love his own wife in the same way. I agree with this as, like we talked about in class, Prospero only talks about his wife once to Miranda and not very much in a way that I think of as very loving and admiring. Because of this, Prospero is unable to interact with the world around him as anything other than a tyrant and powerful being.
In Peter Hulme’s essay, he focuses on the relationship between Prospero and Caliban. Prospero is seen as the playwright of the play, the man who pulls the strings and manipulates the other characters to do what he wants them to. I don’t think that there is really anyone who can read The Tempest and not think the same thing. They’d have to be as naive as Miranda to not see it. Hulme’s brought up an interesting concept that Prospero had casted Caliban to be the new Antonio, which I would not have thought up but can see quite well. Antonio hatched a plan to displace Prospero from his dukedom, and Caliban hatched a plan to displace Prospero from the island and as his master. There’s the idea that Caliban, unlike maybe the others, was not under any magic or being pulled by Prospero’s strings but acting of his won nature: a slave who wanted to overthrow his master.
There were plenty of sections throughout the essay’s that I thought were a little bit confusing and difficult to understand, but for the most part, I found what the authors of these essays had to say very interesting.