MM Nov 5

By: Zarar Ahmed

We started off class by not having the scheduled quiz on the last act of The Tempest. Professor Mathur reminds us once again that the rough draft of Paper #3 is due on Wednesday for Peer Review, and that the final draft will be due on Friday. Of course, its essential to use the Writing Center in Trinkle for reference and advice, and they can provide some excellent feedback.

We begin a discussion from the play, 4.1 211-216 that dealt with the Prospero - Caliban relationship: "Is Prospero correct in painting Caliban as a 'born devil'? Has Caliban come across as a character with an inherently villainous nature or are his actions the result of poor nurture? What does Prospero mean when he tells Alonso in 5.1: 'This thing of Darkness I/ Acknowledge mine' (330-331)? How does this claim complicate the nature-nurture debate and his relationship with Caliban?" Students began to discuss that Caliban's nature is marked by evil; that he comes across as villainous, but it deals with poor nurture more. Caliban can be compared to Frankenstein in this way, as he was never taught morals and the difference between right and wrong. He faces neglect on the island, and his nature may partly be Prospero's fault; Caliban's suffering at the hands of him may be a result of his acts of revenge of losing his dukedom. Shakespeare intended Caliban to be a representation of evil; we can presume he was treated well up until his attempted rape of Miranda, but its hard to tell really because of the lack of information on Caliban's past. At the same time, Caliban's point is inherently evil, without any chance of remorse; he displays no redeeming moments, and its hard to argue for nurture when Miranda grows alongside him and turns out just fine. We talked about the notion of how Caliban becomes a resistance of the colonial mentality.

From there, we discuss several topics relating to the plot of The Tempest, such as the political maneuvering of Prospero to regain his rightful dukedom to discussing Caliban in his role as the colonized subject, and how he is seen as "marketable" in the eyes of Alonso, Gonzalo, Antonio etc. In Gonzalo's speech (2.1 162) "I' th' commonwealth... no sovereignty" he describes the island as the "Anti-Europe", as the utopian communal place. Trinculo, noticing Caliban, proclaims: (2.2 24-35) "What have we here, a man or a fish..." also see him as a commodity. There is a contrast between Gonzalo and Trinculo on what to do with the island. The text seems to be leaning towards colonization, but its sort of a double-edged sword.

There is a lot of room for assumption at the end of the play. The Epilogue works in nicely as Prospero gives up power over the audience and says they in turn have power over him. Prospero may actually be compared to Shakespeare himself on 4.1 line 165: "Our revels now are ended...". It is here where he is planning to give up magic, analogous to Shakespeare ending his career as a playwright. The Tempest is referred to by many as his last play, and the character if Prospero is said to have been manipulated by Shakespeare. His emphasis on Prospero's character may have lead to bias against others in the plot; it becomes "Prospero's story" and delegitimatizing the other characters. Him giving back his magic however could be a strategically bad move because that was the only means of control he had over the people and the island in the text. But we also conclude that he might have created these events in place so his daughter can be the Queen of Milan someday. We end class discussion with the pointing out that in Act 5 Scene 1, pg. 155, Prospero forces the dukedom back from Antonio, yet Antonio never responds back, and we are left to speculate on his motives.

We watched a trailer for a brand new Tempest film set to release in theaters on December 10th, 2010, and end class with Professor Mathur looking ahead to Monday's class, where we will have a writing workshop for the third paper and review a couple of sample papers.

By: Whitney Kiper

Dr. Mathur reminded us that we have to have the rough drafts of our papers in class on Wednesday, and the final paper is due on Friday. She encouraged the class to visit the wiki-notes, use the writing center, and to visit her to go over papers.

We continued on to go over the question: 4.1.211-216: Prospero-Caliban. Is Prospero correct in painting Caliban as a “born devil”? Has Caliban come across as a character with an inherently villainous nature or are his actions the result of poor nurture? In this context, what does Prospero mean when he tells Alonso in 5.1: “This thing of darkness I/ Acknowledge mine” (330-331)? How does his claim complicate the nature-nurture debate and his relationship with Caliban? •	Caliban was never taught what was right and wrong. His actions may be a result from him not being nurtured. He was taught to read and speak, but not taught morals. •	Caliban was not suppose to be thought of as a symbol of evil by Shakespeare. However, as the audience, you never get to see any of these acts of violence. •	We get two views in the play, both Prospero’s and Caliban’s. This allows us as an audience to decide which side we want to choose and defend. •	 Caliban does not seem to have any redeeming qualities, he does not help, but only hurts. •	Why is Miranda not acting the same way that Caliban is? •	Caliban is a symbol of the opposite of the Colonist society, and this causes Prospero to try to dominate Caliban. •	We are not sure of much of Caliban’s past, so we can not be sure of much. All we are sure of is that he was born from a witch, on this island. We can’t decide if he is inherently evil because we aren’t sure of his past, and who has influenced him that way.

After, we compared and contrasted the characters Gonazalo and Stephano. Gonazalo wants to have no weapons, and no colonization on the island. However, Stephano wanted to have people pay to come visit the island. Then the question of what is the text telling us about colonization? Is it pro or against? Some answers were that it seems to be leading towards colonization, but at the same time all the ideas seem to have a double edge sword. Then, a classmate said the idea of colonization is being handed to a bunch of drunk fools, so where is it going to go like that?Lastly, the men end up shipwrecked on this island, and pretty much immediately begin to think of how to make it their own. These ideas come from their society, and their social positions. Even though no one on the island know what class these men are. They bring their hierarchy onto the island. Then next question asked by Dr. Mathur was: Prospero’s speech in Act 4, Scene One, lines 165-180 is thought to show that Prospero’s may be a representation of Shakespeare. Comments of this included that Shakespeare controls over his characters, just as Prospero controls over the people on the island. And that the ending speech is turning the imagination over to the audience, it is their turn to be creative. Also Shakespeare’s last play, so this is all a goodbye act. Lastly, Dr. Mathur pointed out that we shouldn’t think that Prospero is fully Shakespeare because then Prospero would be the dominate figure in the narrative.

The final question we went over was: Is Prospero giving up his magic a good or bad idea? Thoughts on this included He controls people this way, and if he gave it up, he would never be able to control Antonio. And that Prospero is counting on the relationship between Miranda and Antonio so that he would have support. Naples and Milan alliance. Finally that, Prospero does not know what the future is, so how is he sure that everything will workout in the end? It does not sound like he is trying to get his kingdom back, but instead is focusing on revenge.

By: Aradhika Shrestha

We started the class with a discussion on the question of whether Prospero is correct in painting Caliban as a born devil and has Caliban come across as a character with an inherently villainous nature or are his actions the result of poor nurture. Some people believed that his villainous nature is justified because of his poor nurture while some people argued that it’s because of nature. Caliban’s reactions resulted from his poor nurture because after his mom died there was no one to love him and he didn’t receive any love from Prospero. In many ways Prospero can be blamed for Caliban’s villainous nature because when Prospero first came to the island, Caliban actually helped him and showed him around but instead of returning the favor he enslaved him and locked him down. Nature was also a huge influence in Caliban’s evil behavior because his mother was an evil witch. Someone pointed out that we cannot really say that Caliban’s nature is due to nature or nurture because even Miranda’s father Prospero is a negative character in the sense that he manipulates the characters and also orders his servants to kill them but Miranda is not going on killing people. But an argument against that can be that Miranda was never given the freedom to live her life and make her own choices and she never had seen any other human except her father, so even if she wanted to kill someone she would not have the right resources or knowledge. Even though we know that Caliban’s mother was a witch, we do not have enough evidence about Caliban’s past so we cannot really draw conclusions on whether he is evil because of nature or nurture. Next we compared the two characters Gonzalo and Trinculo and their view on colonization. Gonzalo seems like a very nice guy and his view on colonization is very simple and genuine. He does not want to change anything about the island and wants everyone to be equal. He wants a society where men and women are treated the same and poor and rich are have equal status. He is not biased towards anything. His views are kind of unrealistic but it shows that he is a nice and an innocent human being without any ulterior motives. On the other hand, all Trinculo can think about is power and money. His idea about colonization is to dominate the land by making his own rules and regulations. He has no sympathy for the poor and wants to put Caliban for exhibition to earn money. Gonzalo wants to appreciate the land; in contrast Trinculo wants to control the land. In Trinculo’s defense someone pointed out that Trinculo was drunk when he was saying all this but it still represents his thinking and his values.

The last thing we discussed was whether Prospero was right in giving up his magical powers. Giving up his magic is a bad step that Prospero took since that’s how he controlled all the characters so after giving up his magic and announcing it to everyone, it’s not guaranteed that all the characters are going to obey him but we also felt that he also realized the danger of giving up his magic so he made a bond with Alonso by getting Ferdinand and Merinda married.