How Does Shakespeare Present the Realtionships With Ariel and Caliban

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Imogen Hart

AS English Lit – CW First Draft                                                

How Does Shakespeare Present Prospero’s Relationships

With Ariel and Caliban?

  • Second Draft

Caliban and Ariel both share a relationship with Prospero, the lead character of the play. Caliban and Prospero have a relationship mainly ruled by anger and dislike towards Caliban, but has an underlying theme that Caliban is Prospero’s unwilling slave, yet has underlying tones of Caliban being part of Prospero’s personality and that Prospero doesn’t like this. Ariel however has a relationship fuelled by debt with Prospero, but it is a dual relationship, as a paternal theme is made clear throughout. There is also the theme that Ariel is Prospero’s loving side, a side that is only properly realised by Prospero towards the end of the play when redemption is brought about through Ariel, it is almost as though Ariel guides Prospero throughout the play.

The relationship between Caliban and Prospero is complicated, Prospero still has society’s beliefs of natural order, and Caliban, who has had very little contact with the outside world, knows little of the way things work. Caliban (and Ariel) are effectively the “colonised” subjects of Prospero, and Caliban who reacted positively to having new people to see showed the marooned pair around the island, showing them how to live on it. This soon turned sour when Caliban attempted to rape Miranda, and Shakespeare presents the beginnings of the new relationship between Caliban and Prospero as Caliban was forced into slavery by Prospero (“Thou most lying slave…till thou didst seek to violate the honour of my child”). The way to which Caliban reacts to his new found slavery, indicates the differences in how humans respond to “modern” civilisation, causing bitterness, and much hatred between the two former allies.

Prospero and Ariel’s relationship is clear, and the dual roles played by both Prospero and Ariel are shown almost immediately between the two. Prospero demonstrates his role as a father to Ariel as soon as the two characters are first together. The first scene with the duo in has Ariel report that the job of causing the storm is done, and the other characters are now shipwrecked. Prospero is quick to show affection in a paternal way;

‘My brave spirit!

Who was so firm, so constant’

However, use of the possessive pronoun ‘my’ implies there is something else we don’t know about the two. This other side is portrayed soon after the family one is shown. Ariel is set another task, to which he moans ‘Is there more toil?’, and Shakespeare sets the audience up for the other side of the relationship. When asked what Ariel wants, he responds with ‘My liberty’ implying that Ariel has been enslaved almost like Caliban, but he has the hope of freedom in the future to aid him through his work, making the audience think he is paying off a debt. The part of the exchange between Prospero and Ariel when they discuss the spirits freedom is set out as though they finish the line of prose. It is also in Iambic pentameter, emphasising Ariels’ promised freedom.

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Shakespeare also shows how Prospero thinks of Caliban with use of animal imagery and magic semantic fields. Shakespeare shows that Prospero is also affected by the belief of physiognomy, the idea that if someone is beautiful they cannot be evil, but if they are ugly and/or deformed they are evil, and Caliban is described as ‘a freckled whelp’ and ‘not honoured with human form’ giving the impression that Caliban is an animalistic creature, due to the animal imagery, instead of being someone a European would view as trustworthy and honest. This implies that when Prospero arrived on the island ...

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