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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hag-Seed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Theater and The Tempest
Vengeance
Imprisonment and Marginalization
Transformation and Change
Grief
Summary
Analysis
On Monday, Felix drives to class with his confidence restored. This week he will devote to analyzing the main characters; at the same time, he needs to lay the groundwork for his secret, second play. In order to enact his revenge, he must be alert at all times, since “everything depends on his will.”
That Felix’s revenge explicitly takes the form of play strengthens the connection between Shakespeare’s Prospero, who is only implicitly a playwright, and the world of the theater.
Themes
Dylan and Madison have heard that a woman is coming to act in the prison and, like everyone else, they’re excited and intrigued. Full of importance, they tell Felix that she’ll have to wear a security pager at all times, and wish him luck for the day.
Just like in The Tempest, taking care of and protecting the sole female character is a central concern among all the men in the prison.
Themes
In the classroom, Felix starts to explore the history of the island where The Tempest takes place. It was first inhabited by Caliban’s mother, the witch Sycorax. After she dies, Caliban grows up alone on the island until Prospero arrives and takes it over. Prospero and Caliban get along well until Caliban starts chasing Miranda, after which Prospero enslaves him. Still, he’s the character with the most knowledge about and best relationship with the island. Like Sycorax and Caliban, Ariel has lived on the island for a long time, but it’s hard to tell what he thinks about his home.
The island’s history establishes Caliban and Sycorax as its most longstanding residents, with the best claim to ruling it. However, Caliban is enslaved by Prospero for most of the play. The tension between powerful newcomer and oppressed native reflects the concerns with colonialism which were becoming prominent in England as Shakespeare wrote the play.
Themes
The next people to arrive are Prospero, a duke deposed by his brother Antonio, and his baby daughter Miranda. Stranded on the island, they have to live in a cave with no one else for company. Prospero’s only goal is to get them off the island, but Miranda is content because she doesn’t know anything else.
The island is both a prison and a refuge. Similarly, Felix’s cabin is both a trap, preventing him from building a new life, and a haven, providing him access to the memory of his lost daughter.
Themes
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After twelve years, Prospero uses Ariel to create a large storm that shipwrecks Antonio’s boat and lands him on the island, along with the King of Naples, Alonso, and his son Ferdinand, brother Sebastian, and advisor Gonzalo. Believing that Ferdinand has died in the storm, Alonso is devastated; Antonio sees the occasion as an opportunity, planning to murder Alonso so that Sebastian, his ally, can inherit the throne of Naples. Gonzalo, pompous but well-intentioned, bores everyone else by planning an ideal society for the island, in which no one would have to work. All these men are primarily concerned with “who should have power, how they should get it, and how they should use it.”
Antonio, Alonso, and Sebastian are all involved in an internal power struggle—just as the politicians who eventually visit, Tony, Sal, and Sebert, are plotting against each other. What Felix doesn’t mention is that power is also Prospero’s main concern, at least in that he considers himself most deserving of it. In his adaption of the play and behavior offstage, Felix will emerge as markedly different than the protagonist in this respect, while the politicians prove themselves identical to their villainous counterparts.
Themes
Separated from the men is Ferdinand, who believes that his father has drowned. Ariel lures him onto another part of the island with music, where he glimpses Miranda and immediately falls in love. For him, the island is “a place of wonder, and then of romantic love.”
The Tempest examines the ways in which prisons can prove hospitable and nurturing to their captives—but for Felix’s actors, there are few upsides to the modern system of incarceration.
Themes
Last and least are Stephano and Trinculo, the rulers’ drunken servants. They come across Caliban and seek to turn him into their servant, even planning to sell him once they make it back to Italy. For his part, Caliban tries to entice them into killing Prospero by saying they can have Miranda as their reward. The servants share the unscrupulous natures of Antonio and Sebastian.
With their cruelty undisguised by good manners or social status, the servants highlight the terrible natures of those they serve. However, in Felix’s play the politicians will actually unmask themselves with their own actions.
Themes
No one seems particularly enthusiastic about all these details. Pausing, Felix posits the idea that the island is like a “mirror,” providing each character “a reflection of his inner self.” More briskly, he instructs each prisoner to write down each character with a rating indicating how interested they are in each part. For the next few days, everyone will be reading speeches from different characters, after which Felix will make casting decisions.
While Felix is the one who describes the island as a mirror, he’s actually the person who emerges as most different from the character he plays. In this sense, the play shows him what he isn’t, rather than what he is.
Themes
As they write, Felix reflects that besides being a mirror, the island is a theater. Like any director, Prospero is putting on a play, and if he does his work well, he’ll achieve everything he wants. When a few actors look up at him, Felix realizes he’s been mumbling, and sharply admonishes himself to act normal.
At the end of the play, Prospero is uncertain in his happiness even as he’s technically accomplished everything he wanted; he’s often said to reflect Shakespeare’s anxieties about his own role as a playwright. On the contrary, Felix will be much more content after his own revenge—possibly because he’s helped many other people in the process.
Themes
