The Tempest - How is Caliban presented and what is his dramatic significance to the play?

How is Caliban presented and what is his dramatic significance to the play?

        Caliban is the son of Sycorax, a witch that originally inhabited (and so is the only true native) of the Island on which the play is set. He is the “misshapen” slave of Prospero who claimed the island as his own when he was banished to it 12 years previously.

        Prospero refers to him using earthly names, such as “tortoise”, making very clear quite early on that Caliban is not considered an equal by Prospero or Miranda. He is seen as a lower, ‘uncivilised’ life-form because of the uneducated and primal state they originally met him in, making their actions to correct this mirror the current events during the Elizabethan period in regards to the discovery of the Americas. Shakespeare has used the character of Caliban to represent the natives of such countries, giving the role of the ‘civilised’ invaders to Prospero and Miranda who attempt to educate Caliban in a bid to make him an acceptable person in the eyes of the society Prospero was usurped from. This was a failure, as although they “took pains to make [him] speak” they could not rid him of his primal nature or his uneducated sense of morals and so he could see nothing wrong with endeavouring to rape Miranda. This was the point where Prospero stopped trying to nurture Caliban into a respectable man and started seeing him as “filth”. Shakespeare chose to include such an occurrence to highlight the fact that we cannot judge natives from undeveloped countries by western standards, as however much semantic knowledge they acquire, it is made completely redundant if they are taught western morals to which we feel they should abide by, making Caliban crucial to conveying this theme.