Post- Colonial Reading of 'A tempest'

“When the work was done, I realized there was not much Shakespeare left.”

                                                                                                   –Aimé Césaire

Interpreted as white man’s burden, colonization was a means of conquering new lands and imposing the colonizer’s culture from on the native people. Prospero’s capture of Sycorax’s land and his treatment of the natives of the island have prompted many critics to interpret the play as working out the drama of colonization. Caliban’s protest against Prospero and his resistance to colonial power using the language taught by the colonizer helps us interpret the play as a postcolonial text.

The Tempest has often been interpreted as a play about colonialism primarily because Prospero comes to Sycorax’s island, subdues her, rules the land and imposes his own culture on the people of the land. Pushing the native to the side, he places himself at the helm of affairs. He displaces Caliban’s mother and treats her as a beast. He has full control over everything on the island. He makes Caliban work as his servant and calls him a thing of darkness. Caliban is being dehumanized or treated as subhuman. This shows the colonizer’s attitude of looking down on the colonized people. Caliban is seen as a despicable entity. The whites looked down on the people of other color. Some are born to dominate while others are born to be dominated. Caliban is treated as inferior. The colonizer used words like light, knowledge and wisdom to refer him while he used terms like darkness, ignorance and elemental to describe the colonized. This binary opposition shows how Prospero as a colonizer creates essences about the colonized people. Prospero sees himself as a ruler carrying out the project of civilization mission. Prospero as a colonizer educates and civilizes Caliban but without much success. The civilizing mission is always accompanied by the politics of domination over the colonized. These elements allow us to study the play in the light of colonialism.

A Tempest by Aime Cesaire is an attempt to confront and rewrite the idea of colonialism as presented in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  He is successful at this attempt by changing the point of view of the story.  Cesaire transforms the characters and transposes the scenes to reveal Shakespeare’s Prospero as the exploitative European power and Caliban and Ariel as the exploited natives.  Cesaire’s A Tempest is an effective response to Shakespeare’s The Tempest because he interprets it from the perspective of the colonized and raises a conflict with Shakespeare as an icon of the literary canon.

We can read the text with certain means and certain ideas presented in the text itself.

Prospero Complex

Fanon has coined the term ‘ Prospero Complex. Europeans in Madagascar exhibit the need to feel highly regarded by others. The dependence versus inferiority relationship has already been established prior to each individual European entering a colonial situation. An inferiority complex occurs specifically for those colonizers whose “grave lack of sociability combined with a pathological urge to dominate” urges them to seek out a situation with servile people. This complex falls into place especially for the colonizer with self-esteem that is not quenched, or more specifically raised, while in the presence of his own people, where he feels that he cannot compete.  They have sexual guilt in their minds. The guilt constantly challenges the masculinity of the white man. The inferior they feels, the more they dominates. They dominate the natives and tries to mould them as their convenience in power politics. Moreover they would rather like to dominate from

The Caliban Complex

There is the dependence complex. After being forced out of the stable routine of their tribal society by colonizers, they are able to do the thing. It is believed that the lack of stability caused a strong reliance on the colonizers. There are differences in how each group of people handle a difficult situation. When the Europeans entered a difficult situation they were more concerned in proving that they were not inferior.  Colonised were more interested in avoiding The drive to avoid a sense of abandonment results in dependence.

Language

Language is essential. Whether written or spoken, the need for human beings to communicate is intrinsic to our social development and so language is the first thing to be passed on from coloniser to colonise. This we see in The Tempest as Caliban has been taught English by Prospero and Miranda and seems to speak it with a certain amount of fluency. But this an entirely positive experience?

“CALIBAN: Call me X. That’s best. Like a man without a name. Or, more precisely, a man whose name was stolen. You speak of history. Well that’s history, known far and wide! Every time you’ll call me that will remind me of the fundamental truth, that you stole everything from me, even my identity! Uhuru !” (Act 1, Scene 2)

The language is the part of identity. Due to the language of Prospero Caliban felt that he has lost his own identity.  Then he uses the language of protest and rebale.

“Ay, that I will, and I’ll be wise hereafter

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god

And worship this dull fool!”

Caliban is conscious for his identity and race. He is also well known about his colonisation. He is not sorry for hus rebel and wants freedom. These all the rebel he presented through his language.

Miranda obviously believes it to be a great honour and reminds Caliban how she "took pains to make thee speak" and describes Caliban's previous way of speaking as "gabble". However Caliban himself obviously takes a very different view and in a quote that is often cited by anti-colonialist critics he tells them, "You taught me language; and my profit on't is I know how to curse" and he goes on further to wish "the red plague rid you for teaching me your language!" clearly not sharing Miranda's view that she has done him a great service.

Caliban however does recognise the importance of education, citing Prospero's books as the source of all of his magical power and when Stephano and Trinculo fail to see the importance of the books and are more interested in the fine clothes they find, Caliban is incredibly scathing of them.

Thus, we can conclude that ‘A Tempest’ is the Caliban represents the more Black Nationalist ideas. He wants his ideas, his culture and his identity back. The emergence of postcolonial rebel is given flame in the work.