A Tempest By William Shakespeare - 1263 Words

In Cà ©saire’s A Tempest one of the main characters, Prospero, decides to remain on the island with Caliban and live out the rest of his life there. He remains there because he thinks the island needs him to be its ruler. As time continues, we see the deterioration of his mind and body. He becomes feeble and weak. He appears to see opossums overrunning the island and he attacks them to protect civilization. Prospero seems to be hallucinating, and because of this can be seen as a crazy old man who has reached the end of his life. However, in this paper, I will argue that the opossums and other things he experiences aren’t just hallucinations he creates from being in a weakened state, but actually the realization of what he s done in the†¦show more content†¦He despises opossums, as he sees them as a creature â€Å"that pulls itself up by its own tail, the better to bite the hand that tears it from the darkness†, and he precedes to go on a wild spree shoo ting a gun in all directions. He claims to do so to â€Å"protect civilization† and that he cannot let his work perish. To him, the climate seems to have changed as well, as he claims it feels cold. It’s obvious that his old age plays some part in why he feels so drained and disoriented. However, despite slowly dying, he still tries to maintain control over the island and over Caliban. In his younger years, Prospero hated the fact that Caliban wanted to be free, and he actually even compared him to an opossum earlier in the final scene. He hated nature and music and the thought of people being able to run their own lives. To combat the things that he hated, he tortured and enslaved both Caliban and Ariel, and kept them from being happy. He didn’t believe the island would survive on its own, and he felt the need to be in control of everything. He never granted Caliban freedom, and even in his old age he believed that he could still control him. Because of his age , the past, and his state of mind, it’s possible that it is his subconscious dragging up his hidden fears and guilt in the form of opossums, creatures and the changing climate. Prospero’s deepest fears seem to be that of a loss of control, and of allowing others to have their own freedoms. He is