Ariel and Caliban, though now directly identified as slaves, have significantly more vocal agency in A Tempest compared to the original play and speak much more freely about their situations and displeasure with them. How does that change their characterization and role within the play?
Caliban (and by extension Cesaire) brings up the erasure of identity that comes from being called a name that is not your own or one that is forced upon you. Walcott talks about this power of naming in “The Schooner Flight” as well. Though Caliban brings up this point to Prospero and wishes to be called X instead, his character is only referred to as Caliban, even by Caliban himself. What point does Cesaire make in maintaining Caliban’s false naming?
When Heaney describes Walcott, he says that Walcott “never simplified or sold short. Africa and England are in him.” In view of everything we’ve discussed in our course this description in and of itself seems like a simplification on Heaney’s part of the hybridity we were discussing on Monday. Did anyone else read that the same way?
(Did anyone else chuckle when Heaney pondered Walcott’s “large appropriations,” especially in light of our discussions last week about “Strange Fruit”? I may have misread his point, but I found it ironic.)