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Chapter 4
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
Driving away, Felix feels so numb that it’s as if someone else is driving his car. He soon passes the theater and Makeshiweg’s idyllic main street full of expensive restaurants and old-timey pubs, and drives through humbler strip malls full of drugstores and cheap nail salons. After some time, he’s simply driving through the country, land he’s never seen before. All around him are beautiful fields and orchards. Felix realizes that this might be the place for him; he wants somewhere to hide out for a while, to wait out the embarrassing stories that Tony will plant about him in the newspapers. He doesn’t want any reporters to call him or follow him to his house.
Felix’s drive away from the wealthy town reflects the change that’s occurring in his own life, now that he’s no longer a member of the privileged artistic class. However, it’s important that this change isn’t couched in entirely negative terms – Felix may not lunch in expensive restaurants anymore, but he’s forced to experience the natural beauty for which he’s never had time before.
Themes
Driving on, Felix spots a tiny cabin built into the earth, set far away from the road. He parks the car, walks down an old path, and examines the creaky door and low ceiling, sniffing the earthy smell of the interior. There’s no furniture or running water, only a hand pump and an outhouse outside. He decides to find the owner and rent the place.
In The Tempest, Prospero is forced into exile by his brother; it’s notable that while Tony fires Felix, the director exiles himself. The imprisonment Felix will suffer through the next years is largely due to his own pride and obstinacy.
Themes
Felix knows that choosing to martyr himself in this primitive shack is an act of sulking, but he doesn’t have any other options. He certainly can’t immediately find another job with the status and benefits he’s accustomed to—especially not with Tony and Sal aligned against him. More importantly, he doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction of watching him try.
Felix drives back to the rented cottage where he currently lives. Ever since he’s lost his family, he prefers not to invest too much energy in a home of his own. He only has a few pieces of furniture that Nadia once picked out and a small photograph of Miranda, laughing wildly on a swing. Now, since his production of The Tempest is canceled, she’ll have to stay behind the glass forever. He wishes that Tony at least allowed him to say goodbye to the actors and the stage hands, who will be disappointed at losing their work.
Felix’s feeling that the canceled production actively harms Miranda reflects his latent belief that producting the play might really have brought her back in some way. It’s also interesting that Felix describes his living arrangements as devoid of any familial atmosphere; his language here is similar to his later description of the prison as “motherless.”
Themes
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Felix calls a moving company to pack up his things and sets off to find the owner of the shack. He drives to the closest farmhouse, where an initially suspicious woman answers the door; but when Felix tells her he’s been ill and wants to rent it, her demeanor changes immediately. The woman, whose name is Maude, invites him to sit at the kitchen table, telling him how her husband Bert can never make enough money as a truck driver. Hippies have occasionally lived in the cabin before, and she says that Felix should not pay attention to the rumor that it’s haunted.
It’s clear that Maude really does believe the house is haunted, which is ironic because Felix will come to sense the ghostly presence of his daughter there, but for him that’s one of the cottage’s main attractions. Maude wants to maintain strict distinctions between what is real and what isn’t, while Felix wants those distinctions to collapse in order to preserve his connection to Miranda.
Themes
Felix and Maude agree that he can live in the shanty and improve it as he sees fit, in exchange for a small rent in cash. Maude and Bert will plow the lane and supply wood for the stove. In turn, he stipulates that she not tell anyone about him. She clearly thinks he’s a criminal, but says he can trust her, and he believes her. When she asks what name she should give if anyone asks, Felix tells her he is “Mr. Duke.”
Felix’s alias strengthens his ties to Prospero, who is the Duke of Milan. His choice reflects the extent to which he considers his real life a kind of play, in which he’s sometimes the director in charge and sometimes —as in the present moment—a powerless actor.
Themes
