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The character of ‘CALIBAN’ in ‘The Tempest’ and ‘A Tempest’:

                                                 

Ø     Post-colonial literature:-

Colonialism:

The controlling and governing influence of a nation over a dependent country, territory or people. Colonialism is the establishment, exploitation, maintenance, acquisition, and expansion of colony in one territory by a political power from another territory.

Post-colonialism:

Post colonialism or postcolonial studies is an academic discipline featuring methods of intellectual discourse that analyze, explain, and respond to the cultural legacies of colonialism and imperialism, to the human consequences of controlling a country and establishing settlers for the economic exploitation of the native people and their land. Drawing from postmodern schools of thought, postcolonial studies analyze the politics of knowledge (creation, control, and distribution) by analyzing the functional relations of social and political power that sustain colonialism and neocolonialism—the how and the why of an imperial regime's representations (social, political, cultural) of the imperial colonizer and of the colonized people.

       
 ‘The Tempest’:-        

The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skilful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.

‘A Tempest’:-

A Tempest by Aime Cesaire was originally published in 1969 in French by Editions du Seuil in Paris. Cesaire, a recognized poet, essayist, playwright, and politician, was born in Martinique in 1913 and, until his death in 2008, had been instrumental in voicing post-colonial concerns. In the 1930s, he, along with Leopold Senghor and Leon Gontian Damas, developed the negritude movement which endeavored to question French colonial rule and restore the cultural identity of blacks in the African diaspora. A Tempest is the third play in a trilogy aimed at advancing the tenets of the negritude movement. In 1985, the play was translated into English by Richard Miller and had its American premiere in 1991 at the Ubu Repertory Theater in New York after having been performed in France, the Middle East, Africa, and the West Indies.

Ø Etemology:-

The name is an anagram of the Spanish word cannibal (Carib people). Character may be inspired by Kaliban or cauliban in the Romani language- means black or with blackness.

Ø Character of Caliban:-

Caliban is one of the primary antagonists in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. He is the subhuman son of the malevolent witch, Sycorax.

After his island becomes occupied by Prospero and his daughter Miranda, Caliban is forced into servitude. While he is referred to as a calvaluna or mooncalf, a freckled monster, he is the only human inhabitant of the island that is otherwise "not honour'd with a human shape". In some traditions he is depicted as: a wild man, or a deformed man, or a beast man, or sometimes a mix of fish and man. Caliban is a Cambion, the half-human son of Sycorax by (according to Prospero, though this is not confirmed) a devil. Banished from Algiers, Sycorax was left on the isle, pregnant with Caliban, and died before Prospero's arrival. Caliban, despite his inhuman nature, clearly loved and worshipped his mother, and refers to Setebos as his mother's god. Prospero explains his harsh treatment of Caliban by claiming that after initially befriending him, Caliban attempted to rape Miranda. Caliban confirms this gleefully, saying that if he had not been stopped he would have peopled the island with a race of Calibans—"Thou didst prevent me, I had peopled else this isle with Calibans". Prospero then entraps Caliban and torments him with harmful magic if Caliban does not obey his orders. Resentful of Prospero, Caliban takes Stephano, one of the shipwrecked servants, as a god and as his new master. Caliban learns that Stephano is neither a god nor Prospero's equal in the conclusion of the play, however, and Caliban agrees to obey Prospero again.

Character of Caliban in “The Tempest” :-

This picture shows the situation of Caliban in “The Tempest”.

Caliban is a product of nature, the offspring of the witch Sycorax and the devil. Prospero has made Caliban his servant or, more accurately, his slave. Throughout most of the play, Caliban is insolent and rebellious and is only controlled through the use of magic. Caliban claims the island as his own and maintains that Prospero has tricked him in the past.

Caliban represents the black magic of his mother and initially appears bad, especially when judged by conventional civilized standards. Because Prospero has conquered him, Caliban plots to murder Prospero in revenge. It is clear, though, that Caliban is a poor judge of character: He embraces Stefano as a god and trusts his two drunken conspirators to help him carry out a plot to murder Prospero. In many ways, Caliban is an innocent, reacting to emotional and physical needs without the ability to think through and fully understand the events and people who surround him. He is truly a child of nature, uneducated and reacting to his surroundings in much the same way that an animal does.          

Caliban is no mere creation of a passing poetic fancy, no chance addition to the substance of the drama; for although he may have originated in Shakespeare's imagination from the fantastic and wondrous reports about the wild inhabitants (the cannibals) of the newly discovered  continents, and although grotesquely formed and humorously exaggerated — so as to suit the fantastico-comic coloring of the whole — still he is a necessary member in the artistic organism of the piece. And as Prospero's mind is evidently one of more than ordinary endowments, and, like every historical leader of men, represents the higher idea of what is general, so Caliban, his organic opposite, is likewise no mere individual, but also the representative of what is general, the personified idea of human wickedness; in him, in his defiance and arrogance and his blind, coarse sensuality, the demonical meets the brutal. 
Caliban has become a by-word as the strange creation of a poetical imagination. A mixture of gnome and savage, half daemon, half brute, in his behavior we perceive at once the traces of his native disposition, and the influence of Prospero's education. The latter could only unfold his understanding, without, in the slightest degree, taming his rooted malignity: it is as if the use of reason and human speech were communicated to an awkward ape. In inclination Caliban is malicious, cowardly, false, and base; and yet he is essentially different from the vulgar knaves of a civilized world, as portrayed occasionally by Shakespeare. He is rude, but not vulgar; he never falls into the prosaic and low familiarity of his drunken associates, for he is, in his way, a poetical being; he always speaks in verse. He has picked up everything dissonant and thorny in language to compose out of it a vocabulary of his own; and of the whole variety of nature, the hateful, repulsive, and pettily deformed have alone been impressed on his imagination. The magical world of spirits, which the staff of Prospero has assembled on the island, casts merely a faint reflection into his mind, as a ray of light which falls into a dark cave, incapable of communicating to it either heat or illumination, serves merely to set in motion the poisonous vapors. The delineation of this monster is throughout inconceivably consistent and profound, and, notwithstanding its hatefulness, by no means hurtful to our feelings, as the honor of human nature is left untouched. 

Character of Caliban in “A Tempest” :-

This picture shows the situation of Caliban in “A Tempest”.

Aime Cesaire also represents the character of Caliban in his famous work ‘A Tempest’. Caliban has power and language. They also shift perspectives from colonial to post-colonial. Cesaire presented Caliban as colonized with more aggressions. Enslavement caused by their race. He attributes his alleged attempted rape of Miranda to in Prospero's language. His intense feeling of alienation for his dominated subjectivity. Caliban always seeking more for his freedom knows how to use language. Caliban often speaks in his native language.

Caliban tells Prospero that no longer he wants to be called Caliban.

Conclusion:-

At last we can say that the character of caliban play vital role in both the play. We can see the pityful situation of caliabn in the play. Both the writers represents the character of caliabn diffently.


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