The Ambivalence of the Colonial Project in The Tempest

Abstract

Shakespeare in his last play The Tempest (1610-11) dramatizes Prospero to display a cultural consciousness and a way of seeing in which the self is highly exalted and ennobled while the other is degradingly condemned as the wicked and the rapist savage. Such an ideology is conspicuously presented through demonstrating two extremely contradictory characters of Prospero, the dethroned Duke form Milan and Caliban, the native citizen of the island Prospero controls. Prospero is presented as the wise and the powerful duke who can control not only human and spirits but also nature and natural phenomena. He is the rational, civilized and the benevolent agent with humanitarian concern whose source of power is magic that he uses for good tasks in contrast to the malignant magic power possessed by his rival Sycorax, Caliban’s mother. Soon Prospero starts to show irascible, tetchy characteristics and furious rage in dealing with the natives he controls by the power of his books of magic. At an early stage of the play, the distinction between Prospero as a benign power and Sycorax, the foul and abhorred evil witch is breaking down.