“Character study of Caliban  in ‘A Tempest’.”

Name :- Neelamba. R. Sarvaiya.

Course no:- 10 “The Postcolonial Litearature.”

M.A.Sem-3

Roll no:-19

Topic:- “Character study of Caliban  in ‘A Tempest’.”

Year:- 2014-2015

Submitted to:-  Shree S.B.Gardi English Department,
                         M.K. Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

CHARACTER STUDY OF CALIBAN IN ‘A TEMPEST’:-

                          

                           Caliban is one of the primary antagonist in William Shakespear’s play, The Tempest. He is a subhuman son of the malevolent witch sycorax.

                            The character of Caliban is generally thought (and justly so) to be one of the author's masterpieces. It is not indeed pleasant to see this character on the stage, any more than it is to see the god Pan personated there. But in itself it is one of the wildest and most abstracted of all Shakespeare's characters, whose deformity, whether of body or mind, is redeemed by the power and truth of the imagination displayed in it. It is the essence of grossness, but there is not a particle of vulgarity in it. Shakespeare has described the brutal mind of Caliban in contact with the pure and original forms of nature; the character grows out of the soil where it is rooted, uncontrolled, uncouth, and wild, uncramped by any of the meannesses of custom. It is

uncramped

The Soil

"of the earth, earthy."

Pure and origin form of Nature.

uncontrolled

uncouth

wild

“It is of the earth ,earthy.”

 

It seems almost to have been dug out of the ground, with a soul instinctively superadded to it answering to its wants and origin. Vulgarity is not natural coarseness, but conventional coarseness, learned from others, contrary to, or without an entire conformity of natural power and disposition; as fashion is the commonplace affectation of what is elegant and refined without any feeling of the essence of it. Schlegel, the admirable German critic of Shakespeare, observes that Caliban is a poetical character, and

"always speaks in blank verse."

caliban  is one of the primary antagonists in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. He is the subhuman son of the malevolent witch, Sycorax.

                                        After his island becomes occupied by Prospero and his daughter Miranda, Caliban is forced into servitude. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise

 "not honour'd with a human shape" .

                               In some traditions he is depicted as: a wild man, or a deformed man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man. Caliban is a Cambion, the half-human son of Sycorax by Banished from Algiers, Sycorax was left on the isle, pregnant with Caliban, and died before Prospero's arrival. Caliban, despite his inhuman nature, clearly loved and worshipped his mother, and refers to Setebos as his mother's god.

                                      Prospero explains his harsh treatment of Caliban by claiming that after initially befriending him, Caliban attempted to rape Miranda. Caliban confirms this gleefully, saying that if he had not been stopped he would have peopled the island with a race of Calibans—"Thou didst prevent me, I had peopled else this isle with Calibans" (Act I:ii). Prospero then entraps Caliban and torments him with harmful magic if Caliban does not obey his orders. Resentful of Prospero, Caliban takes Stephano, one of the shipwrecked servants, as a god and as his new master. Caliban learns that Stephano is neither a god nor Prospero's equal in the conclusion of the play, however, and Caliban agrees to obey Prospero again.