Grief Theme Analysis

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 he becomes fixated on a hallucinatory “ghost” of Miranda. However, as time passes Felix realizes that he can never return to the life he once had, and will be happier trying to build a new one. By the end of the novel Felix has neither resumed his career nor revived his daughter, but he’s achieved a deep sense of peace by abandoning the effort to do so.

Felix associates the loss of his daughter with the loss of his job, and in his plot against Tony he seeks to recreate the life he enjoyed before the beginning of the novel. Tony fires Felix just as he is preparing to stage a production of The Tempest, which will focus on the father-daughter relationship between Prospero and Miranda. Felix’s own daughter, who has just died of meningitis at the age of three, was named Miranda, and he sees the play as “a kind of reincarnation,” telling himself that he will be able to “catch sight of” her through the play.

Throughout the long decade during which he plots revenge against Tony, Felix imagines resuming exactly the same position in the theater festival and returning to his staging of The Tempest. This vision soothes his professional anxieties and, he feels, will help him overcome his grief for Miranda. Felix dismisses the prospect of seeking another theater job or forming any other personal relationships.

In fact, rather than trying to replace the things he has lost he moves to the woods, giving up both creative work and all but minimal contact with other people. By becoming reliant on the ghostly Miranda, whom he feels is real, he allows himself to pretend that she has never died at all. Even when he takes a job as an English teacher at Fletcher Correctional Center, he envisions this as a way to recoup his losses. Staging The Tempest there allows him to take down Tony and feel closer to Miranda, whom he sometimes feels is speaking to him during rehearsals.

While Felix’s revenge plot is successful, it ultimately leads to the realization that he can never reclaim his daughter and doesn’t want the job he had before; however, these revelations are not disappointments but moments of personal growth. After being reinstated as artistic director of the theater festival, Felix begins to retreat from the theater world and trains Frederick and Anne-Marie to one day take over from him. Watching them take to the industry with enthusiasm, he feels some “nostalgia” for his own artistic past but mostly “happy” for their bright future. He hasn’t reclaimed anything, but he’s put aside the self-centered obsessions that guided him for most of the novel and learned to take deep joy in the well-being of others. In this sense, accepting his loss has helped Felix become a better person.

Moreover, rather than clinging to the hallucinatory Miranda, who has been his sole companion for so many years, Felix is finally able to bid her farewell. He now realizes that “the endgame of his obsession wasn’t to bring his Miranda back to life” but to find some peace after her loss. Quoting The Tempest, he releases her with the benediction “to the elements be free.” Felix thus liberates his daughter’s spirit and opens the possibility of a new life for himself. At the end of the novel he prepares to embark on a long cruise with Estelle, his colleague and potential love interest. Rather than recreating his old life, this relationship marks a final break with that life and the beginning of a new path.

Felix never fully overcomes his grief, and he certainly never forgets his daughter—in the novel’s final scene, he looks fondly at her photograph. However, by abandoning the obsessive and futile desire to reclaim what he has once lost, Felix is able to retain the memories of his old life while building a new one.