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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
Felix knows that Tony’s rise to power is partly his own fault. He never supervised him properly, and he always trusted his loyalty. However, he excuses his thoughtlessness with the fact that, at the time, he was overcome by grief at the death of his only child. He pulls away from this painful thought, telling himself to pretend it’s “only a movie.”
Felix tells himself to pretend that his daughter’s death is part of a performance—but since performances are the most important part of his life, this doesn’t necessarily make it seem less real.
Themes
Even if Felix hadn’t been thus weakened, Tony probably still would have “ambushed” him. Felix always left all the practical and mundane details of the show to Tony, while he focused exclusively on his role as Artistic Director, creating “the lushest, the most beautiful, the most awe-inspiring” theatrical productions that wowed audiences and turned the Makeshiweg Festival into one of the most prominent theater festivals in the country.
One of the consequences of Felix’s fall from grace is that he’s able to analyze what he once did wrong. Already it’s evident that he’s much different than the arrogant director he’s describing right now. Although he can’t see it yet, this change has had positive effects on him.
Themes
To create these spectacles, Felix had to hire the best actors, set designers, and costume makers. For this, he needed large budgets, and drumming up money was Tony’s gift. Felix always thought of this as a lesser talent, only a small contribution to his productions. He thought of himself as a “cloud-riding enchanter” while Tony was an “earth-based factotum.”
Making moral or character judgments based on the different jobs people have is one of the things Felix will encourage his prisoner students not to do. It’s also one of the reasons they are so resentful of the politicians who eventually come to see their production.
Themes
He now knows that this was idiotic. Tony had slyly encouraged Felix to stay away from festival cocktail parties and events that catered to donors and the Board—taking on all these duties himself so that Felix had more time to focus on the productions, or on the central roles that he sometimes took for himself.
In a sense, Tony outwits Felix by encouraging him to think that the artistic concerns of theater and the mundane logistical details of real life never overlap or affect each other.
Themes
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Tony even encouraged Felix to put on productions that created a stir among audiences and the Board, such as a production of Titus Andronicus with a naked and copiously bleeding Lavinia, or Pericles staged in outer space. Felix is never perturbed by bad reviews, which he views as evidence of audience participation. Now he sees those productions as “flights of fancy” only possible for an “earlier Felix.” Just before Tony’s coup, everything changed for him.
While Felix has always been a good director, the careless way he describes his past plays differs from the seriousness with which he treats his current production of The Tempest, even if it takes place in a prison. What makes a play meaningful isn’t where it’s staged but what ideas it communicates.
Themes
First to “leave” Felix is his wife Nadia, who dies of an infection just after giving birth. He often tries to remember her, but she fades away quickly, leaving him to take care of his newborn daughter, Miranda. This task is the only thing that keeps him from succumbing to grief, although he has a lot of help. Since he doesn’t know the first thing about childcare, he hires nannies and babysitters to take care of her while he’s at work.
Even though Nadia is a minor character in the novel, her sudden death highlights the extent to which Felix’s life is defined by loss. Even his relationship with Miranda is couched in terms of a response to grief.
Themes
Even though he doesn’t have a lot of time to spend with her, Felix is enthralled by Miranda. He even takes her to the theater, where she sits quietly, unlike “lesser” toddlers. He makes plans to travel with her when she’s older and teach her everything he knows. But, at the age of three, she suddenly contracts meningitis. Her nanny isn’t even able to reach him on the phone, since he’s in rehearsal with orders not to be interrupted. By the time he gets to the hospital, Miranda is already dead.
Felix’s relationship towards Miranda is the most sympathetic aspect of his character—while he can be devious and self-centered at other times, here he emerges as a flawed but devoted parent, trying to do his best amid difficulties.
Themes
As a director, Felix knows better than anyone else that theater rests on illusion—however, he also wants to believe that its magic can extend to real life.
Themes
In order to “transform, or at the very least enclose” his sorrow, Felix devotes himself to a new production of The Tempest, which he believes will be a “reincarnation” of Miranda. Through the play, he can imagine his daughter growing up into a beautiful young woman, always a companion for her father. He vows to create the most spectacular setting possible for his “reborn” Miranda, outdoing himself in every way. He imagines Ariel as “a transvestite on stilts” and searches out a talented child gymnast named Anne-Marie Greenland to play Miranda, hoping that her performance will be so “fresh” as to actually seem real.
Although Felix hates the changes that Tony wreaks in his life, he recognizes the need to transform himself in order to survive—and he knows the power of theater to achieve personal transformation. However, when he uses words like “reborn,” he seems to invest theater with the power to work miracles as well. Felix constantly fluctuates between viewing theater as fabrication and as something directly tied to real life.
Themes
Felix himself will play Prospero; through the play he can be the protective and wise father that, in real life, he wasn’t. For the wizard’s famous magic garment, he decides on a cape made of unstuffed plush toys – fake rabbits, lions, tigers, and bears. The costume will reflect Prospero’s “supernatural but natural” abilities. He believes that The Tempest will be the best play he’s ever done, although in retrospect he knows that his obsession with it was self-destructive, as it could never actually bring Miranda back to him.
This garment is an obviously fake representation of something real and recognizable. In this sense, it reflects the fact that while theater is obviously a manufactured spectacle, it’s also scarily capable of recreating and affecting the real world.
Themes
