Tempest Essay -- essays research papers

The Tempest According to Elizabethan beliefs an individuals loving position was more or less fixed. The King was King as he had been given a mandate by God, and all positions below this were based on a rigid kind hierarchy, which were also dictated by birth.This ideology was decidedly conservative and used politically as a way of social control forcing people with less status to internalise their outclassedity and subservience, expect it part of the ingrained order of the universe. Any rebellion, personal or collective, was thusly seen as an act of defiance not only against the State only when God. This bum be seen as a highly effective means of keeping order and perpetuating the power structures already existing in society.We can read literature as expressions of universal themes and investigations into gentlemans gentleman nature and the human conditions, but we can also give alternative readings that question natural assumptions and investigate the silences in a text. I n essence, reading the politics of the play. A traditional reading of The Tempest would position Prospero as the victim of unjust betrayal, who marooned on an island with his beautiful, virtuous daughter, uses his magical powers to right the price done to him. It is the experient story of the rightful ruler who is disposed by the bad guys, but manages to make water back his power and live happily ever after.A post-colonial reading, which foregrounds issues of hotfoot and power inequalities, would give quite a different interpretation.The play contains rebellions, political treachery, mutinies and conspiracies. There are many challenges to authority, however, the text resolves these problems in the end by having peace, harmony and order restored, with the rightful ruler placed back in his position of power. In this way any disruption to order is seen as evil and those who dare question it need to be punished, thus perpetuating the social value of the time.It is true that Antonio seized power from his older brother, Prospero, and that this usurpation is spoted as wrong by the dominant values of the time and by the text. This viewpoint is constructed by presenting Antonio as a treacherous, evil character who is willing to murder Alonso and Gonzalo. This is the view foregrounded by the play, but little is mentioned about why this state of affairs arose. The silences of the story, involving Antonio being ... ... values demand restraint, controland self-discipline (as seen later in Prosperos warnings to Ferdinand and Miranda) and the text equates indigenous values as barbaric and violent. In essence the European colonialist has invaded a new country, taken possession and set up their systems of values as the only legitimate code of deportment. Through this Caliban has been dispossessed and pressure to give up his ways of living and language.Caliban is constructed as innately inferior and savage because of his race. This is articulated by the supposedly swee t and tender Miranda But thy sottish race -/Though thou didst learn - had that int which good natures/Could not can to be with ..(31) In these lines Calibans race is seen as the reason for his barbaric behaviour - it is his very nature that makes him savage and dangerous. In this the text constructs other non-European races as savage, less human, incapable of so-called civilisation all because of their race this is a bring up indictment of non-Europeans as it positions them as naturally inferior and unable to vary their ways so that they will never be able to initiate the fine sensitivity and refinement of Western civilisation.