Hag-Seed

by

Margaret Atwood

Themes and Colors
Theater and The Tempest Theme Icon
Vengeance  Theme Icon
Imprisonment and Marginalization Theme Icon
Transformation and Change Theme Icon
Grief Theme Icon
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

A retelling of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed tells the story of a director named Felix who, after being ousted from his job at a prominent theater festival, begins teaching Shakespeare in a prison, eventually using his new position to get back at his old enemies. Both novel and play center around a protagonist who does his best to control the direction of the plot and the actions of those around…

read analysis of Theater and The Tempest

Vengeance

Set in a idyllic Ontario town, Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s retelling of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Just as the play’s protagonist, Prospero, seeks revenge on the man who steals his kingdom, Felix wants to get back at Tony, a former colleague who supplants him as director of a prestigious theater festival. For years after this act of betrayal, Felix is dominated by anger and bitterness. As his desire for revenge becomes more obsessive…

read analysis of Vengeance

Imprisonment and Marginalization

In Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Atwood’s retelling Hag-Seed, most of the characters spend time trapped in literal and metaphorical prisons. Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero is trapped on a desert island after losing his kingdom in a coup; Atwood’s equivalent, Felix, exiles himself to a remote cabin after being fired from his job. However, the two men’s reactions to their imprisonment are starkly divergent. Prospero uses his magic powers to imprison others, entrapping…

read analysis of Imprisonment and Marginalization
Get the entire Hag-Seed LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hag-Seed PDF

Transformation and Change

Like the play on which it’s based, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Hag-Seed is a novel full of transformations, in which characters constantly change roles, ascend to power, or fall into disgrace. The novel’s protagonist, Felix, initially sees such transformations as inherently false and unjust; he devotes most of the novel to returning himself and his adversary, Tony, to their original states. However, as his revenge plot progresses it becomes evident that rather than…

read analysis of Transformation and Change

Grief

The beginning of Hag-Seed is marked by two serious losses for the protagonist, Felix: his job as director of a famous theater festival, which his assistant Tony steals, and his young daughter Miranda, who has recently died of meningitis. Understandably, Felix addresses his grief by plotting to reclaim what he has lost. He devotes a decade of his life to avenging himself against Tony and getting his job back, and in the meantime…

read analysis of Grief