Imprisonment and Marginalization Theme Analysis

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 and abusing the half-human monster Caliban who inhabited the island before him. On the other hand, when Felix takes a teaching job at a prison, he takes charge of a group of men who, like Caliban, have been demonized and exiled within their own society; he uses his power as a director to help them confront their pasts and to stage a revolt against the politicians who exploit prisoners for their own ends. Changing the role of her protagonist, Atwood gives the marginalized characters in her narrative their chance to speak, thus looking to a future of empowerment rather than a continuation of the cycle of incarceration.

In The Tempest, Prospero reacts to the loss of his kingdom by imprisoning the inhabitants of the desert island where he himself is trapped. When Prospero arrives on the island, it’s inhabited by a spirit named Ariel and Caliban, a half-human, half-monster being who claims to own the island. Prospero enslaves Caliban, forcing him to do chores and constantly describing him as inhuman and unworthy of better treatment. He also forces Ariel, who has magic powers, to do his bidding, although he releases him at the end of the play. It’s obvious that Prospero reacts to his own imprisonment by worsening the lives of those around him.

It’s probable that Prospero’s forcible domination of the island, and his campaign to dehumanize its original inhabitant, mirrors the relationship between European colonizers and natives of conquered territories. In this sense, the proliferation of imprisonment in The Tempest reflects anxiety about colonialism, which was becoming a phenomenon as Shakespeare wrote the play. While The Tempest at times presents Caliban’s grievances as legitimate and gives him some compelling speeches, it ultimately privileges Prospero over him and refrains from protesting too strongly at his plight.

Unlike Prospero, Felix reacts to his own imprisonment by helping to liberate others. While he’s often a self-centered character, Felix insists on emphasizing the prisoners’ humanity, treats them with dignity, and helps them stage a revolt against the politicians who have no respect for them. By staging Shakespeare’s political dramas within the prison, he helps the prisoners confront the traumatic pasts that led them to prison and prepares them to eventually build new lives. At the end of the novel, he’s helped secure an early release for one of the prisoners, 8Handz, and takes the young man under his wing during the period of reentry. Rather than perpetuating cycles of imprisonment as Prospero does, Felix works to undo them.

Importantly, the prisoners themselves identify deeply with Caliban; in their staging of The Tempest, they transform him from a victim of oppression into a symbol of empowerment. In many ways, the prisoners at Fletcher Correctional Center are much like Caliban: they’re demonized and marginalized by their society, especially the powerful politicians that occasionally descend to visit the prison. Atwood even strengthens this connection by suggesting that their current incarceration is the result of living within a society defined by its racist and colonialist past. Red Coyote, a Native Canadian prisoner, points out that Caliban was driven to villainy because he “got his land stole,” just as many prisoners turned to crime because of their disadvantaged social status.

At the end of the novel, a prisoner named Leggs presents a rap he’s written from the perspective of Caliban, in which he says he “ain’t gonna get on the back of the bus / and you can give your land right back to us!” The prisoners tie Caliban to the struggle of various marginalized groups for civil rights, making him a positive rather than a negative character. Ultimately, it’s their strong identification with Caliban that inspires them to revolt against the politicians visiting the prison to see their play—men who, in their exploitative and disrespectful attitude towards prisoners’ rights, have taken on the oppressive character that Prospero displays in the world of The Tempest.

Importantly, Prospero often derides Caliban with the pejorative “Hag-Seed,” meaning that he’s the son of a witch. Felix and the prisoners reclaim this word, employing it positively in the speeches they write about Caliban, and Atwood uses it for the title of her book. The transformation of the name from insult to acclamation reflects the novel’s shift towards active protest against mass incarceration and the oppressive social systems this phenomenon represents.