Hello class! This post will be a kind of anchor of the five close-readings we did in class and the themes we discussed alongside them. Kind of as a primer to get you ready to see the themes of The Tempest echoed back at you in our newspaper headlines. 1. Full Fathom Five, Act 1 Scene 2Full fathom five thy father lies; In this section of the play, Ariel is singing charmed verses to Ferdinand that falsely describe the corpse of Ferdinand's still-living father. Ariel is acting as a mystical extension of Prospero's will and power. Prospero wants Ferdinand to do certain things (like fall in love with Miranda), and Prospero uses Ariel to twist reality and tell Ferdinand lies that affect his emotional state. In other words, power tells lies to manipulate the emotions of the less powerful. Emotions are the key to actions. 2. Nature versus Civilization, Act 2 Scene 1I' the commonwealth I would by contraries Here old man Gonzalo is pontificating on his perfect world. If Gonzalo were king of the island (a strange thing to daydream about aloud in front of your actual king), all the trappings of agricultural civilization would be stripped away and life would be better. Gonzalo is illustrating a point of view shared by Montaigne in his essay "Of Cannibals" that inverts the traditional idea that civilization automatically brings progress. Gonzalo prefers to keep his island as a hunter-gatherer or pastoral society. He believes that evil comes from the "progress" of society, and innocence can be restored to humanity by rewinding the clock of our own scientific and civil achievements. 3. Hell as a Place in our Minds, Act 3 Scene 3GONZALO Here, Prospero has executed his revenge upon Sebastian, Alonso, and his brother Antonio for the betrayal that stole Prospero's life away from him all those years ago. And the revenge takes place on the canvas of the victims minds. Ariel makes the three guilty parties mad, making their punishments invisible to innocent Gonzalo and all the more harrowing to those inflicted by it. In art and culture of the time, perhaps spear-headed most dramatically by Milton's Paradise Lost, the idea of hell was being redefined. No longer was hell being conceived as a physical place on a map, like it was in the Medieval conception of the world. Hell was now a matter of experience, and we humans no longer have to wait until after death to experience it. 4. This Rough Magic, Act 5 Scene 1Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves, There will never come a time when these words don't move me. Here, Prospero reveals himself finally as the complicated, multidimensional hero of the play, instead of the villain corrupted by power that he teetered on becoming. He gives up his rough magic, his power over the island and his power over the minds of his enemies and friends alike. In just a few more acts, Prospero will drown his book and leave his magical island. Just as in a few more lines, Shakespeare will end his playwriting career and return to Stratford-Upon-Avon to his family and eventually his grave. Words have power, and here we have an intricate, compelling portrait of the writer as a magician. Who else do we give power over our emotions and minds? Who else is able to create worlds that we can inhabit? Writers, of course, the effective ones at least, spin worlds out of airy nothings. 5. Brave New World, Act 5 Scene 1MIRANDA Here, at the very end of the play, Miranda sees people. She has been raised in complete isolation. Up until this point, she has seen exactly three humans: her father, Caliban, and Ferdinand. The excitement and innocence that "admiring Miranda" (Shakespeare made this name up for this play, btw) sees in the society of people contrasts with Prospero's tired, weary, disillusioned perspective. 'Tis new to thee, not to me. The newness and the wonder at life have tarnished for Prospero. Even his triumph at regaining his title is tempered by his ambivalence at drowning his books and separating himself from his power. And, of course, it has become almost impossible to read these words in their original context without thinking of Aldous Huxley's appropriation (shameless magpie!) of the words for the title to his dystopian novel, Brave New World, which was just recreated into a series. Comments are closed.
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AuthorI'm a Houston high school teacher. Welcome to my adapted, socially-distanced, quarantined AP English Literature and Composition classroom. Archives
May 2021
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