"The role of the teacher can often be a negative one" discuss…

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Tuesday, 13 May 2003                            Jad Salfiti                            

A2 English Literature

“The role of the teacher can often be a negative one” discuss…

The definition of a teacher is one who teaches or instructs; one whose business or occupation is to instruct others; an instructor; a tutor. The Tempest was written in 1611, following the discovery of the Bermudas and the colonisation of Ireland, during what is known as the Jacobean period. King James I resided over the throne. The most important themes are language and power: or to blend the two word power. The Tempest can be viewed as an allegory for power. The institution or individual that controls language: controls society. Prospero has a great control of language; his magical powers and intellect separate him from the other characters within the play.  Prospero’s magical powers signify his ‘academic ascendancy’ and he becomes the teacher figure within the play.  

Prospero emerges as the most obvious teacher within The Tempest. He was a scholar in Milan and he imposes his intellectualism on his daughter. This shows the chain of transmission of knowledge. Miranda is educated and empowered by her knowledge. Miranda is under the thumb of her dictatorial father. Prospero even refers to Miranda as his “foot”.  Prospero has educated his daughter, Miranda, the savage and deformed slave Caliban, and acts as a spiritual teacher to all the corrupt members of the shipwreck. It would be easy to cast Prospero as the omniscient, judicious, transcendent type within the play, but that would lend Prospero a positive role.

Prospero is a ‘bad’ teacher because he is abusive and misuses his gift, language, he is dictatorial towards Caliban. Prospero is continually mourning the loss of his dukedom, which his own brother usurped.  Therefore, Prospero had political power but lost it. Prospero rarely accepts responsibility for his actions as a ‘bad’ leader; he neglected his dukedom for magic, the occult, this links in with the Jacobean theory of the body politic. Prospero was an absent duke; he was presented with a choice between his dukedom and his study, and opted to lock himself in an ivory tower with his magic books. It can thus be argued that Prospero’s magic was the reason he lost his dukedom and magic is exactly the means by which he regains his dukedom, so as a play it goes full circle, and Prospero disowns his magic and retakes his dukedom. Prospero teaches Ferdinand, the importance of being a good king, for the king to be a good ruler, he needs to know what it’s like to be a servant and thus he is forced to carry logs, a punishment usually reserved for Caliban. 

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Prospero is solipsistic. He enters his own private world as opposed to public one.

Prospero, the usurped; ultimately becomes Caliban’s usurper. The fundamental hypocrisy is that if Prospero was a man of principle, he would have lived peacefully side-by-side with Caliban, but he chooses instead to dominate over Caliban as his ruler, he chooses to usurp, instead of co-operate.

Furthermore, Prospero is obsessed with achieving revenge on the men that betrayed his trust, the same crime is scorns Caliban for.  From a biblical perspective Prospero’s obsession with revenge completely contradicts the Christian principle of forgiveness and ...

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