The Character of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest Essays -- Tempes

The Character of Caliban in Shakespeares The tempestCaliban is one of the most interesting of Shakespeares characters. For centuries, scholars pee-pee puzzled everyplace the pixilateding and importance of this central character. Who or what is this creature? Is he a man or a beast (Peterson, p.2)? Most of the people who have debated this question take the question itself at face value. Caliban is either a man or a beast. The other characters in the play unthaw him as a poisonous slave, savage, and hag-seed (Act 1, Scene 2), but that does non mean that the reader must do so as well. Let us take a closer look at Caliban the individual and assess the question of his pieceity. In the end, I think we will see that Caliban is scarcely as human as the other characters in the play.The first delegacy against Caliban is his shape. Prospero beckons him come by shouting, What ho Slave, Caliban/ Thou landed estate, thou, speak...Come thou tortoise Prospero does non even deign to place him among humankind instead he is called earth as if he is part of the very ground-- the dirt that Prospero rules. Later, Trinculo calls him A rum fish and Stephano refers to him as a monster of the isle with four legs. (2,2) Indeed, Caliban is neer spoken of without some dehumanizing adjective added to the address. I would, however like to argufy the notion of his ugliness. During Shakespeares day, there was a very narrow, very specific model of beauty. For example, a woman was usually considered most beautiful if she was very fair. This showed that she was not exposed to the sun through any type of common tug and thus signified her gentility. To most of Elizabethan England, this concept of beauty was the exactly concept of beaut... ...ight not all be good ones, are, nevertheless, very human ones. In fact, most of Shakespeares characters exhibit attributes far worse than Calibans, notwithstanding their good-will is ever called into question. Consider Iag o of Othello. Iago exhibited a startling lack of redeeming qualities, yet he was never called a monster. The only reason that Caliban should be called a monster lies in the only way he differs from the other characters-- his appearance. It is a shame that, while a modern audiences may question the preaching of Caliban, they do not often question the reason behind it, and by failing to do so, they, along with Prospero become slaves to their own preconceptions. Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall encompassed the lesson that we must escort from Caliban. They said, By enslaving Caliban, we enslave ourselves. Only when we free Caliban will we free ourselves.