Relationship between the Colonizer and the Colonized in “THE TEMPEST” by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” compiled in The Bedford Introduction to Drama (1993) is a romantic comedy which revolves round the protagonist of the play; Prospero and his magic spell to achieve his latent objective in the far off island of Caribbean which he has colonized with the only representative of colonized subject; Caliban with different colonial impulses Trinchulo, Stephano and Sebastian and the relationship between the colonizer; Prospero and the colonized; Caliban who has lost everything to the magic power and is bound to serve the cruel colonizer in his own native territory. Being brought by his mother Sycorax Caliban is very pure, innocent and natural. How ever, when desperate Prospero took over the island and started to colonize it, Caliban is fated and doomed to serve him and his daughter Miranda with unquestioning spirit that has corrupted him and aggravated him in his well being as he has nothing to fight against him.  Prospero on the other hand is very cruel and totally a dictator with his command over Ariel and the different elements of the island and the nature. He constantly belittles Caliban and intimidates him to get what he is after over the subject of his colonization and proves be very ungrateful guest as he leaves the island with the colonial guilt in him taking everything that was worth in his dukedom back in Milan. The oppression by the ‘one’ and the fight for freedom by ‘the other’ in the colonialism never ends till the last of the play.

            The play begins with the protagonist exiled to the unknown destination; to the island of the Caribbean, where Prospero practisess all the typical phase wise process of colonization; capturing the land, animals and the resources and finally people through the teaching of the language and culture. Prospero’s dominant attitude even in the unknown territory of the Caribbean island and over the only helpless subject Caliban is representation of the colonizer of that era. His treatment to Caliban and the spirits and his attitudes towards the island is highly condemnable in the present as it was in the contemporary time when this play was written.

Prospero is crafty in his first attempt of survival and first step of colonization and used the rule of force. Exiled from the dukedom of Milan, Prospero is desolated in the middle of nowhere and without any basic need, except few books, for the survival. He uses his magic power to seize the island and take control over the only subject; then and there Prospero established the relationship of the colonizer; ‘the one’ and Caliban; the colonized; ‘the other’ with his craftsmanship. Prospero shows the true colour of the colonizer with his policy, perfect religion and the complete use of materials and power to deem himself as the lord of the island and Caliban who seems unchanged with the mingle of Prospero’s artifice and tastes except for the use of language which he uses for cursing his crafty oppressor. He had snatched the island from the witch Sycorax and ‘the other’ was forced to show the fresh spring to drink from, berries and roots to feed upon, stock of fruits to nourish upon and log to keep the colonizer and his daughter warm at night. Prospero immediately captivates spirits and Ariel with his magic spell and uses them for his crafty motives threatening them.

Prospero intimidates and belittles Caliban and Arieal to have the supremacy over the noble savage Caliban and timid Aerial almost though out the play. It is completely unacceptable to the readers of the post colonial era to find out Prospero’s   ugly command: “Hagseed, hence! Fetch us in fuel, couple with the ugly threat:

If thou neglect, or dost unwillingly

What I command, I’ll rack thee with old cramps’

Fill all thy bones with aches, make thee roar

That beast shall tremble at thy din. (Act I, ii, 371-74).

Even to the Aerial he intimidates:

If thou more murmur’st will end anoak

And peg thee in his knotty entrails till

Thou has howled away twelve winter. (Act I, ii, 299-99)

He has that terror clasp with his magic and he has unjustly used over the helpless ‘ones’ to take advantage of them each and every time that he required. There isn’t any single human essence in the treatment of the Prospero to Caliban and Ariel. There is no uniformitarian view of the human race even by the wise and learned Prospero though Prospero depends on Caliban’s service for survival and he exacts constant loyalty from Ariel for having rescued him from the imprisonment of Sycorax.

Caliban is frustrated from the very beginning with the oppressive attitude of his dictator master Prospero. He makes his entry in Act I cursing his oppressor, ‘this island is mine, by Sycorax my mother which thou takest from me’ (Act I, ii. 333-334). He lets his suppressed emotions burst out like a dormant volcano to express his disgust and frustration. He loathes his confinement in the hard rock somewhere while Prospero keeps the whole island to himself. His regretful act of introducing the colonizer to the different qualities of the island and his inaccessibility to those essences of the island has aroused such feelings of disgust and frustration in Caliban.

European sense of superiority goes along with the ill attitude of the colonizer Prospero in the play ‘The Tempest.’ He is arrogant and can’t keep up to tolerate the primitive quality and natural attributes of Caliban, his kins and the island. ‘They were labelled savage because they appeared to live like beasts, as nature produced them, with no refinements’ (quoted by Anderson Routedge & Kegan Paul in Colonialism: The Discoverer and the Discoverer,1975). Though Prospero is resting his white man’s burden by teaching Caliban to walk, to talk English and to civilize, to cook food and eat and dress up, he is strongly posing himself with the sense of superiority over the natural, pure and uncorrupted Caliban of the island. He hates the island and is openly critical about the island calling it ‘poor sail’ and ‘poor colt’ and he frequently addresses Caliban a ‘wretched.’ He uses his European lens to judge Caliban where he finds himself superior and ‘the other’ inferior. ‘The one’ is proud of his possession and knowledge and prostrates himself as an intellectual and widely read person and says,

“Knowing I love my books, he furninshed me

From mine own library with volumes that

I prize above my dukedom.” (Act I, ii, 68-70).

He’s proud that what he is due to the books that he brought from library. He reads and ‘the other’ doesn’t.

Caliban regrets over his own deeds; making Prospero convenient and more exploitative and curses himself. He is able to benefit from their language. When Prospero allures him with promise of tasty dinner, Caliban feels that ‘one’ is giving him back what was his own as he had shown them the qualities of the isle, ‘fresh spring’, ‘brine pit’, ‘barren place and fertile land’ and he curses himself regretting that he did all these to ever carve his destiny as slave. He constantly uses the language to curse himself and to curse Prospero telling that spell of Sycorax ‘toad’, ‘beetle’, ‘bat’ light on him. He retorts to the ill treatments of Prosper and Miranda as even Miranda calls him ‘abhorred slave’. Every hour to teach ‘the other’ one or the other things to uplift him from the barbaric state and the final rejection of his company as he attempted to rape Miranda, is retaliated with the benefit of the language as he says,’ You taught me language and my profit on it, Is I know how to curse’ (Act I, ii. 366).

Caliban is very puny and servile and tries to seek freedom just to enslave himself to another tyrant colonizers. Stephano and Trinchulo, when they were perceived as the ‘Moon God’ by Caliban, they feed him ‘wine’ and play with his wit and act the inhumane to benefit from the situation. Caliban is ignorant about the other human existence as he had seen only Prospero, who tormented him, and Miranda, who hated him. Thus, these two representatives of the colonial impulse in the play were hope for Caliban and is ready to do anything for them, ‘I’ll kiss thy foot. I’ll swear myself thy subject’ (Act I, ii. 157-158).  Caliban takes this opportunity as a chance to fortify his freedom and Caliban seeks help with the hope to get rid of Prospero. When this idea struck Stephano and Trinchulo, they envision the island as a space of freedom and vast potential. They are power hungry like everyone in the colonial psyche though they are somewhere in the middle of nowhere; Antonio had exiled his brother for the sake of dukedom of Milan and Sebastian is ready to kill his brother to ascend the throne of Italy. Stephano immediately poses himself as the superior being over Caliban and frequently makes him lick his boot and starts to dreams a comfortable life enslaving Caliban as ‘the other’ is ready for any kind of servility. Stephano had thought Caliban to be a stinky fish though he could see that human shape in the first encounter. The colonial psyche of belittling the native and trespassing their culture is the shallow judgement about the colonized by the colonizers.

Prospero lives under the constant fear though he is very dominant in the nature. He is scared of the might and strength of the Caliban. There’s always a chance that Caliban’s reprisal for his sovereign as Caliban is conscious and hasn’t deviated from the fact that the island was his and he was the king of himself. Prospero lives in a well compounded cave and keeps Caliban at distance even when he summons him to comply with his commands. There’s a fear in his eye all the time. There’s always an Ariel to assist him. He had implanted the seed of destruction as he had taught Caliban the language, the conceptual tool, and Caliban can use it against his master. He is scared that Ferdinand might seduce his daughter and constantly keeps eye on her. He gives Ferdinand a test to prove that he was worthy of Miranda and has patience to wait for the fruit that he is so excited to pluck.

Prospero was religious person with certain morality yet he was harsh on Caliban. On passing the test given to him successfully, Prospero lets Ferdinand to be with Miranda but he doesn’t permit him to cross the limit before the sacred matrimony and constantly warn him:

‘If thou dost break her virginity-knot free

All sanctimonious ceremonies may

With full and holy rite be minist’red,

No sweet aspersion shall the heavel let fall

To make this contract grow; but barren hate.

Sour-ey’d disdain, and discord shall bestrew

The union of your bed with weeds so loathly

That you shall hate it both. Therefore take heed,

As Hymen’s lamp shall light you. (Act IV, i, 15-23, qtd. Virgilian Models of Colonization in Shakespeare’s Tempest by Okamura, D.S.W). Propero doesn’t allow them to have sex before they had the holy rites performed. This shows that he was a religious man with the sense of morality. He is violently vengeful towards his brother Antonio. He could have killed him entrapped in the tempest of the sea and with the power of the magic but he didn’t do that.

Prospero doesn’t have any guilt for colonizing the island and was centrally always allegiance to Milan. A colonizer is always true to his homeland.  He sets caliban and his companions free, “Come hither, spirit Set Caliban and his companions free. Untie the spell.’ (Act IV, i, 252-24). He gives the island back to Caliban and frees the spirits ‘all spirits are melted in air’ (Act IV, i, 149-150). As by Bender, J.B in The Days of The Tempest, ‘The reveals speech exhales such a perfume of bitter nostalgia.’ He misses his art, literature and culture. Upon resuming his dukedom Prospero’s demonstrates his conduct of the colonial and utilitarian motives which deny any love, gratitude, recognition of the place culturally, morally and naturally. He thoroughly had exploited the island and upon end of its function, he leaves it. He is a perfect example of the ungrateful guest on disowning his hosts.

Thus, we can say that the relationship between Prospero; the colonizer and the Caliban; the colonized was never smooth as from the very beginning as Prospero intimidated, use the rule of force and carried the air of his own art, culture and literature and failed to see and appreciate the  true beauty of the island and noble savage; Caliban. On the other hand Caliban felt that he was always oppressed and was exploited. He was a conscious person with no refinements of artificiality. He was always looking for the opportunity to regain his sovereign and was very abusive all the time and finally got what he always wanted ‘freedom’ to be true self in his native island.

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