In the Tempest the character named Caliban is considered a savage and even sometimes referred to as a monster. People defined as savage are not accepted by a conquering country. They do not practice the same traditions as the colonizers. This makes the 'savages' seem deprived and unintelligent to them so they decide to teach the 'savages' their ways.
Prospero and his daughter Miranda did this to Caliban. Caliban lived on the island first. It rightfully belonged to him, ‘“As I told you before, I am a subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island”’. At first they were kind to him, taught him what they thought was truth and turned him into themselves. This isn't the only time this has happened though. Countries have been completely taken over and have been destroyed by the new mans customs.
I read a chapter from Literarcy Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice and it mostly focuses on the theory of what a savage is considered. I made me think of all of the suffering Caliban or any other savaged considered colony had to go through, "In its interaction with the conquering culture, the colonized or indigenous cultures forced to go underground or to be obliterated." Just imagine your whole life learning one way? Then foreign nations take over your land and go against everything you had once learned then teach you their ways. No matter what you do, they will always be right because they have all the power. Both sides have different point of views, “On one hand, the colonized observes two somewhat distinct views of the world: that of the colonizer (the conqueror) and that of himself or herself (the colonized, the one who has been conquered)”. Prospero and Miranda thought they were doing something right for Caliban but were they really? Did Caliban want to learn their culture? Before he knew words, he might have not had a choice to learn but now he despises them both for teaching him.
Also, I watched a video called How Hollywood stereotyped the Native Americans. This made me realize how similar Caliban is to the Native Americans. Even though they technically owned the land, settlers from Europe traveled across the sea to America and eventually forced the Native Americans to live in reservations. Because the Settlers took their land, the Native Americans fought back which caused the settlers to see them as savages.
Personally, I think Shakespeare was a smart guy. He knew his audiences and wrote for their understanding and beliefs. But he was two sided. In other plays he wrote, often times the slaves were their masters friends and were treated kindly. Also, in the play The Merchant of Venice, the character Shylock is Jewish and many people back then were not very fond of people of that religion. Shylock asks why is he hated so after being tormented and answers, “and what is his reason? I am a Jew…. If you prick us, do not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?” This shows that even though the Jews were hated, Shakespeare wrote sympathy for them but in a way his audience couldn’t tell. This relates to Caliban because I feel that Shakespeare did the same thing. He wrote it so the idea of Caliban would agree with the time but secretly put his own side to why colonization was wrong.
This whole subject reminds me of The Danger of a Single Story. If the colonists realized that to the ‘savages’ they were the savage ones, taking their land and changing their customs, maybe it would have been a more peaceful time. All of the stories about how Native Americans will kill any ‘white man’, there were never any stories of how the ‘white man’ was killing all of the Native Americans and if there were, maybe the term ‘savage’ wouldn’t exist.
Nice job, Samantha.
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