MY PRESENTATION ON CHARACTERIZATION OF CALIBAN IN ‘THE TEMPEST’ AND ‘A TEMPEST’

1. CHARACTERIZATION OF CALIBAN IN ‘THE
TEMPEST’ AND
‘A TEMPEST’
Prepared by- Urvi Dave
Course- M.A.
Semester- 3
Enrolment Number- 14101009
Email id- dave.urvi71@gmail.com
Batch Year- 2014-16
Paper no- 11
Paper Name- Postcolonial Literature
Submitted to- Smt. S B Gardi
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar
University

2. COLONIALISM
Control and governing influence of a
nation over a dependent country,
territory or people.
POST COLONIALISM
means after Colonialism. It is the
study of a culture after a physical and
political withdrawal of an oppressive
power.

3. THE TEMPEST
Written by William Shakespeare
Son of Sycorax
Real native of the Island
“Savage and deformed slave”
Less resistance and uses
Prospero's language
Plays the role of discourse of
Colonialisms.

4. A TEMPEST
Written by Aime Cesaire
Raises voice against his white
master Prospero
 Expressed his thought more
emotionally and descriptively
 Alienation from his own
Identity
 Opposes against Prospero
 Journey to gain freedom
under Prospero’s rule

5.  Caliban in the central figure.
Caliban’s name is probably an
anagram of “ Cannibal”.
 Caliban, a half-monster, son of
Sycorax and enslaved by Prospero’s
magic. He was treated kindly and
taught to speak by Prospero and his
daughter, but fell from grace when
he attempted to rape Miranda.

6.  Notion of Monster
 The implication is that the natural and
instinctively, without any of the controls of social
or moral order. Caliban is then denounced as “a
thing most brutish”. The attempt by Prospero and
Miranda to teach Caliban to talk wherently
produces the second affecting note in the
portrayal of Caliban. It is a sentence of Caliban’s
which is typically Shakespearean in its brevity and
compressed meaning.
“You taught me language; my profit on
it is, I know how to curse”.

7. The Colonising analogy is
not so much with Prospero.
Caliban’s relationships as it
is with the perversely
“civilised” influence of
Stephano and Trinculo, who
are Europeans, on the
‘servant-monster’.
 Character of Caliban has
a certain pathos.

8.  Poetry
 Caliban’s relation with Stephano and Trinculo
 Caliban’s character may be attributed to two
factors which makes his ultimate repentance
more plausible; he is not entirely a beast, but
shows throughout a potential for finer things.
This alternations between the time and the
gross sides of Caliban is a sort of link between
the Noble and the ignoble characters.

9.  The monster is based on the wicked spirit
type in the Italian pastoral, though Cesaire
develops him to a considerable extent. He is
an elemental, earthbound man, without a
soul, but with a direct and shrewd natural
intelligence.
 Language

10. Though he is bestial, immoral and
gross, there is still an elementary
poetry about him, and one must
notice that most of his lines
throughout the play are in verse,
and that some of the finest
poetry is put into his mouth.