Here's the latest on Hamlet. Enjoy...
Hamlet, what a guy. I’m having a really hard time figuring out what to say for this paper. What observations do I have to offer on Hamlet or Hamlet? Perhaps I should focus my energies more towards the criticisms. I read the articles that formerly annoyed me. I even read the business explaining what the different types of criticism were to better understand what I was reading. And, now making an informed opinion about the feminist essay and the psychoanalytic essay I have two observations: 1) Freud is fucking nuts and 2) the essays still annoy me (though slightly less). I use strong language in my description of Freud for a very specific purpose in describing just how strongly I find his ideas repugnant. The things of use he has to say weren’t even his original thoughts; he simply expounded on them, more often than not, in terrible ways.
Yes, it’s fun in a slightly juvenile way (which I am much more than slightly juvenile myself) to joke about incest and the son having unnatural urges towards the mother and all that. However, I am quite sure no one before dear old Sigmund Freud honestly thought that sons wished to kill their fathers so they could bang their mothers. It’s an inane thought! Does Hamlet have mother issues? Undoubtedly. Is it because he wants to literally or figuratively have sex with his mother? Please. Even I in my admitted immaturity am not that stupid. In case I have offended I will explain. I am certainly not attempting to insult you or any of my classmates.
Shakespeare was writing in a time when gender roles were very much not as they are today. His views on women as expounded by his plays (his personal views I cannot vouch for) are horrific and barbaric. There is no excuse or reason for it; you can write all the feminist criticism you want but you’re never going to find a better reason for the women being they way they are other than women’s rights, freedoms, or basic understanding of the female gender simply did not exist at that time. It doesn’t take an essay to figure that out. Throw in a heavy mix of guilt, embarrassment and oppression towards anything sexual is it any wonder men, women, parents and children interact the way they do? Our cultural completely repressed a healthy sexual development for the better part of two millennia. That’s not an oedipal complex that’s religion (or people) screwing people up. Hamlet does not want to have sex with his mother he wants to keep his mother from having sex because he is completely uneasy with his own sexuality, let alone that of his parents. Like every child in the world his reaction to the idea of his parent getting it on is “gross!” What is so hard to understand about that?
Freud is an idiot. I can’t say it any better. Not to mention he completely misunderstood the female urge to use a penis as being envy for one of our own. Why do put any weight on what this man says?!
Okay, moving on. The above speaks, more or less, to Adleman’s essay. As to Showalter I have to say she has given me nothing that sparks my thoughts on Ophelia or Ophelia’s relationship to the play. She doesn’t talk about the character she talks about what the character has meant to the culture of art and literature and the study of psychology. That’s all well and fine, but that doesn’t help me better understand the play. It doesn’t teach me anything and it certainly doesn’t make me think. These critics (and most all critics for that matter) seem to disregard that what we are reading are stories. Stories (this is excluding metafiction) must have a plot and certain things must progress as they do for said plot to make sense and be effective. That means that not every piece of the play can or should be extracted and examined on its own. It must be looked at in the context of the rest of the story. And some of it doesn’t mean anything—it’s just there to help the story move along. Am I exceptionally naïve in having this belief? Why? It’s the nature of any piece of writing so why isn’t it considered in criticism?
Ophelia, I believe, exists for a very specific purpose. She goes mad for a purpose. There is more than one purpose, perhaps, or more than one purpose could be argued certainly but you can’t look at her as a psychological study and expect to understand her position in the play. And you certainly can’t take Hamlet out of it’s time and attempt to look for reasons of Hamlet’s treatment of Ophelia in modern day feminism. It doesn’t work. He treats her like an ass because he is an ass and because he had no basic respect for women. He has no basic respect for himself and, therefore, cannot have respect for women but there’s no deep thought that needs to accompany that revelation. That’s not the part worth pondering anyway. What I want to know is what was Hamlet lacking as a human being and how did that lack affect Ophelia who obviously hoped to (or did I’m not sure) love him. What does Ophelia’s character have that I as a woman, if not a medieval woman, can relate to or learn from? Why does it matter that I read this play? What does it make a person feel? What does it hope to teach? What is the warning here in this tragedy?
I don’t care if Ophelia had schizophrenia. I don’t care if Hamlet couldn’t define himself because his father and Claudius kept falling into each other. How does his inability to separate the father figures affect his musings on life and the meaning of it all? Why is he so damn whiny? What’s the true story of Gertrude? Who is she, what does she like, why did she marry Claudius so quickly following the death of her husband? What can I as a reader learn or feel from that? Why does it matter that I read this story in the 21st century?
The Tempest and its implications for modern technology mattered because it helped us consider what we might be doing wrong all these years later. It makes us think about the danger of creating Calibans. Hamlet has extremely important lessons concerning growing up, becoming an adult, recognizing our place in the world and coming to peace with ourselves and where we come from, but everyone seems more interested in talking about the incestuous urges he has towards his mother and oedipal complexes. I think that’s a blatant misreading and a way for everyone to run away from the parts of the play that are truly worth studying. I think people are scared to really contemplate the questions Hamlet himself asks in the play. I think people would much rather think of an outlandish, unavoidable reason to be angry with their parents other than to face it. Who wants to accept responsibility for him or herself? There’s no fun in that.
This play is thick and while I hate the character Hamlet I do think the play is worth reading and studying. I think it’s worthwhile because it forces us to seriously consider or own inner natures. And I think we don’t study it that way because none of us wants to.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Well I had so much fun posting last week's paper I thought I would do it again. This week we read Hamlet. Enjoy.
I do not think I have been this depressed since seeing Star Wars: Episode 3 (hence the pseudo-title of this informal paper). I mean, honestly, could there be a more depressing tale in all of human history? I haven’t read any of the other Shakespearean dramas so I don’t know the answer to that, but I have to say I stayed away from them for precisely this point! It’s a sad story! Why the hell do I want to be sad?!
Anyway, I apologize and I promise at some point I will get to the point of this paper, but first I must point out the irony of reading Hamlet during the week of Valentine’s day (which I would like to think you planned) and since one’s seasonal depression is usually at its worst in February (never mind the snow storm) I’m really in no mood for the melancholy Prince of Denmark. But despite all of that it had the same effect on me a lifetime original movie does on a lazy Saturday afternoon--I just couldn’t turn away.
I’m not trying to demean Shakespeare here, and I’m certainly not trying to undermine the importance of Hamlet. I might be the only person in the class to be excited to recognize the relationship to Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country (in which they quote Hamlet) but that doesn’t mean I don’t comprehend why it important to read this play.
That being said I have a few issues. First of all, how can Hamlet muse on the meaning of life in such a powerful way as he does in his soliloquies and still be such a self-obsessed, whiny, immature little troglodyte? It’s almost as if he’s two separate characters--owing to which, people suffering from extreme depression as Hamlet does sometimes do seem that way. Also, there is something seriously more screwed up with that boy than just his father’s death. He was already inconsolable before he spoke to the ghost, the whole revenge plot seemed more to give him an out for his unhappiness than anything else.
And what about poor, dear Ophelia! Alas for such a fate as hers. I do think Hamlet loved her, but I think his love for her, like his love for everyone stemmed mostly from how much he perceived they loved him. The boy (and I say boy on purpose because he was not truly a man, despite the beard) had issues with his parents. His father’s death seemed to deny him the ability to prove his worth and his mother’s second marriage was the cause of some serious abandonment issues. Freud would have a field day!
Though, Freud completely screwed up Oedipus so probably we should leave him out of this, but I digress.
Hamlet is completely unable to process human nature. I suppose that is the best way to describe it. I know there is speculation that this play was written following the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and that much of the philosophical ponderings derive especially from a need to understand that. It certainly makes the greater purpose of the play easier to understand. Hamlet is such a dramatic character that without believing he is the author’s tool for pondering life and death I’m quite sure I would scoff him. Or I would if the writing weren’t so damned good.
But what do you say about Hamlet? What can you say? I’ve been known to ramble on the meaning of life and death but I have no urge to do that here. A more purposeful matter would be to ramble on some people’s inability to handle life and death. For that I turn to a modern day example of Anakin Skywalker.
Poor Anakin, turned to the dark side not because he is a sociopath or pure evil at heart, but because he couldn’t handle love. And that too, I think, describes Hamlet. Hamlet doesn’t know how to love. To love is to forgive and let go and he can do neither of those things. His inability causes him to kill an innocent just as Claudius and become that which he hated--a crime he eventually dies for. Karma’s a bitch.
Hamlet and Anakin both have too much passion and not enough wisdom. They seem trapped in that perpetual state of philosophizing without any closure. Their intelligence causes them to know things they shouldn’t, Anakin with the force and Hamlet with his father’s ghost (and before that his natural dislike of Claudius) and they are left separated from their fellows by an irreconcilable difference. They feel too strongly without any idea how to handle it.
That leads me to my next question. Do some people feel more strongly than others? Why is Hamlet so affected by his father’s death? Was he always prone to fits of melancholy? Did he suffer from bi-polar disorder? What is the deal?
I think part of it stems from being unable to see the world in shades of gray. Hamlet saw everything in white and black, but most everything he saw was black. What else will become of a man when all he sees is failure surrounding him? What else is to be expected but slight madness and severe depression?
Is it better then to become the cynic and accept human nature as failing and beyond hope? To shut down the emotional drives, cease to philosophize about what it all means and simply accept? Is anyone that dares to feel as Hamlet does and ponder those dark questions of the afterlife doomed to depression and madness? I don’t think so, I think Hamlet lacked the emotional maturity to deal with his station in life, but, in his defense, when one is overwrought with sadness it’s awful hard to be mature. He is, in the end, a sympathetic character, though, and that is what matters. At some level we can each relate to Hamlet and indeed, learn from his mistakes.
Though, on a happier note, it’s pretty okay that my uncle was gay. I never had to worry about him killing my dad and marrying my mum to get to the family fortune.
Episode 3--Revenge of the Hamlet
I do not think I have been this depressed since seeing Star Wars: Episode 3 (hence the pseudo-title of this informal paper). I mean, honestly, could there be a more depressing tale in all of human history? I haven’t read any of the other Shakespearean dramas so I don’t know the answer to that, but I have to say I stayed away from them for precisely this point! It’s a sad story! Why the hell do I want to be sad?!
Anyway, I apologize and I promise at some point I will get to the point of this paper, but first I must point out the irony of reading Hamlet during the week of Valentine’s day (which I would like to think you planned) and since one’s seasonal depression is usually at its worst in February (never mind the snow storm) I’m really in no mood for the melancholy Prince of Denmark. But despite all of that it had the same effect on me a lifetime original movie does on a lazy Saturday afternoon--I just couldn’t turn away.
I’m not trying to demean Shakespeare here, and I’m certainly not trying to undermine the importance of Hamlet. I might be the only person in the class to be excited to recognize the relationship to Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country (in which they quote Hamlet) but that doesn’t mean I don’t comprehend why it important to read this play.
That being said I have a few issues. First of all, how can Hamlet muse on the meaning of life in such a powerful way as he does in his soliloquies and still be such a self-obsessed, whiny, immature little troglodyte? It’s almost as if he’s two separate characters--owing to which, people suffering from extreme depression as Hamlet does sometimes do seem that way. Also, there is something seriously more screwed up with that boy than just his father’s death. He was already inconsolable before he spoke to the ghost, the whole revenge plot seemed more to give him an out for his unhappiness than anything else.
And what about poor, dear Ophelia! Alas for such a fate as hers. I do think Hamlet loved her, but I think his love for her, like his love for everyone stemmed mostly from how much he perceived they loved him. The boy (and I say boy on purpose because he was not truly a man, despite the beard) had issues with his parents. His father’s death seemed to deny him the ability to prove his worth and his mother’s second marriage was the cause of some serious abandonment issues. Freud would have a field day!
Though, Freud completely screwed up Oedipus so probably we should leave him out of this, but I digress.
Hamlet is completely unable to process human nature. I suppose that is the best way to describe it. I know there is speculation that this play was written following the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, and that much of the philosophical ponderings derive especially from a need to understand that. It certainly makes the greater purpose of the play easier to understand. Hamlet is such a dramatic character that without believing he is the author’s tool for pondering life and death I’m quite sure I would scoff him. Or I would if the writing weren’t so damned good.
But what do you say about Hamlet? What can you say? I’ve been known to ramble on the meaning of life and death but I have no urge to do that here. A more purposeful matter would be to ramble on some people’s inability to handle life and death. For that I turn to a modern day example of Anakin Skywalker.
Poor Anakin, turned to the dark side not because he is a sociopath or pure evil at heart, but because he couldn’t handle love. And that too, I think, describes Hamlet. Hamlet doesn’t know how to love. To love is to forgive and let go and he can do neither of those things. His inability causes him to kill an innocent just as Claudius and become that which he hated--a crime he eventually dies for. Karma’s a bitch.
Hamlet and Anakin both have too much passion and not enough wisdom. They seem trapped in that perpetual state of philosophizing without any closure. Their intelligence causes them to know things they shouldn’t, Anakin with the force and Hamlet with his father’s ghost (and before that his natural dislike of Claudius) and they are left separated from their fellows by an irreconcilable difference. They feel too strongly without any idea how to handle it.
That leads me to my next question. Do some people feel more strongly than others? Why is Hamlet so affected by his father’s death? Was he always prone to fits of melancholy? Did he suffer from bi-polar disorder? What is the deal?
I think part of it stems from being unable to see the world in shades of gray. Hamlet saw everything in white and black, but most everything he saw was black. What else will become of a man when all he sees is failure surrounding him? What else is to be expected but slight madness and severe depression?
Is it better then to become the cynic and accept human nature as failing and beyond hope? To shut down the emotional drives, cease to philosophize about what it all means and simply accept? Is anyone that dares to feel as Hamlet does and ponder those dark questions of the afterlife doomed to depression and madness? I don’t think so, I think Hamlet lacked the emotional maturity to deal with his station in life, but, in his defense, when one is overwrought with sadness it’s awful hard to be mature. He is, in the end, a sympathetic character, though, and that is what matters. At some level we can each relate to Hamlet and indeed, learn from his mistakes.
Though, on a happier note, it’s pretty okay that my uncle was gay. I never had to worry about him killing my dad and marrying my mum to get to the family fortune.
Tuesday, February 07, 2006
After reading The Tempest for class I had to read Brave New World and watch an old sci-fi movie, Forbidden Planet. I then had to write a response to all of this for my teacher. I like my response so much I'm going to post it here. It will make more sense if you've read these works or seen the movie, but I think it gets its point across anyway. And perhaps it will inspire you to expand your horizons. I am writing directly back to the teacher so just ignore any references to "last week".
“The Monster in the Id! The Monster in the Id!” I love that line. Anyway, on to more important matters. The Tempest did not bother me have so much as what we have read and watched this week. How has reading Brave New World and watching Forbidden Planet changed how I view The Tempest? I’m not quite sure, but I know they have changed how I view my life.
Brave New World is just flat out scary. I was sure I would hate it (since I hated it in high school) but I read it in a day. Absolutely couldn’t put it down. I suppose that means I’ve matured at least a little bit since fifteen. However, for as much as I liked it, it scared me more. Especially in this age of the government secretly tapping phones and keeping tabs on people all over the place without their consent. Which being a conspiracy theorist myself I’ve thought has been going on this whole time and the media just finally caught wind of it, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that Brave New World might be closer to coming true than any of us want to admit. But I’m supposed to be relating this to Shakespeare.
I have to say I thought Brave New World was more a commentary on the overall works of Shakespeare than The Tempest in particular. I didn’t see an exact link to that play in particular, more an overall commentary on emotion viewed thru Shakespeare and what that means. There isn’t really a character in the novel a person can get behind except perhaps Mustapha Mond or Helmholtz. Bernard is a whiny, self-pitying idiot and John Savage is a misogynistic ass. I feel for The Savage, I honestly do but he is an excellent example of the dangers of learning the world only through Shakespeare. Helmholtz and Mustapha Mond were right in their assessment that you must go over the top when reaching for an emotional reaction but they recognized, which The Savage failed to do, that such excess should exist only in the text. “Civilization” is devoid of emotion and John Savage has too much of it--or, too much held in too tight of strictures.
As to how all of this relates to The Tempest I suppose it goes back to an idea I am still half-forming. There is something different about The Tempest from Shakespeare’s other plays. It isn’t just about colonization or a god story. Reading it this last time it’s almost like Shakespeare himself didn’t even know where he wanted it to go exactly. In his other plays he expresses the major theme explicitly. One of his characters offers the reader (or viewer) a nice little emotional rant that sums it all up quite nicely. But in The Tempest we don’t ever get that. It bothered me last week that no one saw a greater meaning in the play. We read the critics and we all tailored our responses around what we read but none of us, myself included, really reached for something greater. Maybe a critic has already commented on this, but what if The Tempest is bigger than love or death or revenge? What if this is Shakespeare’s culminating play? The one that truly tries to tackle all the aspects of the human condition, humanity itself?
Certainly Brave New World and Forbidden Planet go in that direction. Their storylines have nothing to do with colonization or revenge and everything to do with man tinkering with powers that are beyond him. As the captain says at the end of the movie, “man is not meant to play God.” I suppose that’s where you were trying to get us to go last class with your talks of Chimeras and what not. Sarah and I knew we were missing it but we couldn’t figure out where you wanted us to go. Sorry about that.
So I’m back once again to that age-old question, what does it all mean? Was Shakespeare trying to warn us away from creating Calibans or warn us that we already had? Did he create Prospero so like his enemies in the hopes we would look to ourselves and see our own faults so clearly? Was he trying to show us the dangers of a caste system or too much knowledge? Or all of the above?
Prospero is an amazingly powerful character, but his power truly lies in manipulating those with more power than himself. That does reflect mankind in that, as human beings we are fearfully fragile, but immense in our ability to create technology that protects us. Is Prospero then, a metaphor for all of humanity? And, if so, what does that mean? Is Shakespeare trying to tell us we are meant to lord over nature or show us that we are, actually, equal to it? Without his servants Prospero wouldn’t survive and without our natural resources neither do we. Perhaps Shakespeare saw in the discovery of the New World the destruction of the last pure wilderness and with it the total sublimation of the Earth. But how could he have possibly predicted we would end up where we are today?
But maybe it’s more simple than that. Greed is no new friend to humans and greed was as powerful in the 17th century as it is today. Greed has been the root of destruction for entire cultures. Assuming that Shakespeare was bound by the strictures of the time, Prospero had to fulfill certain requirements for the audience to accept, the play had to end a certain way where does that leave us? Prospero had to get his dukedom back and had to forgive his brother. Miranda and Ferdinand needed to fall in love. These were all necessary parts to the story for the basic plot. Of more interest is Prospero’s dealings with Caliban and Ariel.
Caliban is an ill-mannered brute, there can be no doubt about that, but he reminds me of Magua from The Last of the Mohicans. Beaten and abused by the world he lives in is he truly to blame for what has become of him? Unable to comprehend the world Caliban attacks Miranda and Prospero deals with him accordingly. Does that make Prospero evil? Who is at fault? What if no one is at fault? What if that is the point?
That’s not a very eloquent way of stating the argument but it does get the point across. Caliban is a victim of circumstance, but a dangerous creature none-the-less. Prospero is a conceited jerk, but must deal with the very real threat Caliban poses to Miranda. Antonio is a backstabber, but Prospero wasn’t watching over his dukedom properly. Alonzo should have kept Antonio from stealing the dukedom, but as King he had the very real need of his provinces being run by competent people. Everyone in the play makes a bad decision but not a completely unjustified one.
What if, after all his plays and all his sonnets William Shakespeare finally came to the realization that humanity will never be perfect? Could The Tempest be his response to that realization? Both Brave New World and Forbidden Planet deal with the ills of utopian societies. Could Aldous Huxley and the writer of Forbidden Planet have grasped this concept so clearly? Did they grasp this realization or did it just work its way out in their works?
Deep down we all know utopia isn’t possible but perhaps on Shakespeare and the writer of Forbidden Planet understand why. Because always, for all our education and refinement, for all our power, magical or otherwise, there will always, always be a monster in our id.
Ahhh!
“The Monster in the Id! The Monster in the Id!” I love that line. Anyway, on to more important matters. The Tempest did not bother me have so much as what we have read and watched this week. How has reading Brave New World and watching Forbidden Planet changed how I view The Tempest? I’m not quite sure, but I know they have changed how I view my life.
Brave New World is just flat out scary. I was sure I would hate it (since I hated it in high school) but I read it in a day. Absolutely couldn’t put it down. I suppose that means I’ve matured at least a little bit since fifteen. However, for as much as I liked it, it scared me more. Especially in this age of the government secretly tapping phones and keeping tabs on people all over the place without their consent. Which being a conspiracy theorist myself I’ve thought has been going on this whole time and the media just finally caught wind of it, but that’s neither here nor there. The important thing is that Brave New World might be closer to coming true than any of us want to admit. But I’m supposed to be relating this to Shakespeare.
I have to say I thought Brave New World was more a commentary on the overall works of Shakespeare than The Tempest in particular. I didn’t see an exact link to that play in particular, more an overall commentary on emotion viewed thru Shakespeare and what that means. There isn’t really a character in the novel a person can get behind except perhaps Mustapha Mond or Helmholtz. Bernard is a whiny, self-pitying idiot and John Savage is a misogynistic ass. I feel for The Savage, I honestly do but he is an excellent example of the dangers of learning the world only through Shakespeare. Helmholtz and Mustapha Mond were right in their assessment that you must go over the top when reaching for an emotional reaction but they recognized, which The Savage failed to do, that such excess should exist only in the text. “Civilization” is devoid of emotion and John Savage has too much of it--or, too much held in too tight of strictures.
As to how all of this relates to The Tempest I suppose it goes back to an idea I am still half-forming. There is something different about The Tempest from Shakespeare’s other plays. It isn’t just about colonization or a god story. Reading it this last time it’s almost like Shakespeare himself didn’t even know where he wanted it to go exactly. In his other plays he expresses the major theme explicitly. One of his characters offers the reader (or viewer) a nice little emotional rant that sums it all up quite nicely. But in The Tempest we don’t ever get that. It bothered me last week that no one saw a greater meaning in the play. We read the critics and we all tailored our responses around what we read but none of us, myself included, really reached for something greater. Maybe a critic has already commented on this, but what if The Tempest is bigger than love or death or revenge? What if this is Shakespeare’s culminating play? The one that truly tries to tackle all the aspects of the human condition, humanity itself?
Certainly Brave New World and Forbidden Planet go in that direction. Their storylines have nothing to do with colonization or revenge and everything to do with man tinkering with powers that are beyond him. As the captain says at the end of the movie, “man is not meant to play God.” I suppose that’s where you were trying to get us to go last class with your talks of Chimeras and what not. Sarah and I knew we were missing it but we couldn’t figure out where you wanted us to go. Sorry about that.
So I’m back once again to that age-old question, what does it all mean? Was Shakespeare trying to warn us away from creating Calibans or warn us that we already had? Did he create Prospero so like his enemies in the hopes we would look to ourselves and see our own faults so clearly? Was he trying to show us the dangers of a caste system or too much knowledge? Or all of the above?
Prospero is an amazingly powerful character, but his power truly lies in manipulating those with more power than himself. That does reflect mankind in that, as human beings we are fearfully fragile, but immense in our ability to create technology that protects us. Is Prospero then, a metaphor for all of humanity? And, if so, what does that mean? Is Shakespeare trying to tell us we are meant to lord over nature or show us that we are, actually, equal to it? Without his servants Prospero wouldn’t survive and without our natural resources neither do we. Perhaps Shakespeare saw in the discovery of the New World the destruction of the last pure wilderness and with it the total sublimation of the Earth. But how could he have possibly predicted we would end up where we are today?
But maybe it’s more simple than that. Greed is no new friend to humans and greed was as powerful in the 17th century as it is today. Greed has been the root of destruction for entire cultures. Assuming that Shakespeare was bound by the strictures of the time, Prospero had to fulfill certain requirements for the audience to accept, the play had to end a certain way where does that leave us? Prospero had to get his dukedom back and had to forgive his brother. Miranda and Ferdinand needed to fall in love. These were all necessary parts to the story for the basic plot. Of more interest is Prospero’s dealings with Caliban and Ariel.
Caliban is an ill-mannered brute, there can be no doubt about that, but he reminds me of Magua from The Last of the Mohicans. Beaten and abused by the world he lives in is he truly to blame for what has become of him? Unable to comprehend the world Caliban attacks Miranda and Prospero deals with him accordingly. Does that make Prospero evil? Who is at fault? What if no one is at fault? What if that is the point?
What if Shakespeare was just trying to say shit happens and there’s nothing anybody can do about it?
That’s not a very eloquent way of stating the argument but it does get the point across. Caliban is a victim of circumstance, but a dangerous creature none-the-less. Prospero is a conceited jerk, but must deal with the very real threat Caliban poses to Miranda. Antonio is a backstabber, but Prospero wasn’t watching over his dukedom properly. Alonzo should have kept Antonio from stealing the dukedom, but as King he had the very real need of his provinces being run by competent people. Everyone in the play makes a bad decision but not a completely unjustified one.
What if, after all his plays and all his sonnets William Shakespeare finally came to the realization that humanity will never be perfect? Could The Tempest be his response to that realization? Both Brave New World and Forbidden Planet deal with the ills of utopian societies. Could Aldous Huxley and the writer of Forbidden Planet have grasped this concept so clearly? Did they grasp this realization or did it just work its way out in their works?
Deep down we all know utopia isn’t possible but perhaps on Shakespeare and the writer of Forbidden Planet understand why. Because always, for all our education and refinement, for all our power, magical or otherwise, there will always, always be a monster in our id.
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