An idyllic island is the setting of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest in which the ideas of colonialism are presented through the character of Prospero’s creation of artificial power and its enforcement and the consequences that follow. He controls the island through his magic and oppresses the people through this superiority he has manufactured, and ultimately creates roles for the other characters within the play. Prospero’s manipulations and efforts to enforce and gain more authority represent the struggles within colonialism of role creation and the enforcement and carrying out of these roles. These connections of Prospero to colonialist ideals becomes clear through Frantz Fanon’s text “Racism and Culture” as he analyzes the causes and
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All that Prospero knows, his ideology that he is born into and therefore, according to Althusser, is always subject to (Althusser 699), is how to be a duke and be in power. Therefore, upon his traveling to this new island, Prospero saw an opportunity in the real condition of an inhabited island and his loss of dukedom in Milan. Prospero establishes a relationship to this real condition before him, creating subject roles in Ariel and Caliban in order to serve the purposes of his real condition. In Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” he describes that an ideology is the imaginary relationship to a real condition (Althusser 695), and such is Prospero’s island. His island is created as a result of Prospero’s own ideological subjectivity to power, and his beliefs that magic signifies power. This belief is evident in one interaction with Ariel, in which Prospero recounts the story of his arrival to the island and his rescuing of Ariel from the control of Sycorax, saying “It was mine art” (Shakespeare 117), art being his magic, that saved him, therefore establishing a relationship of debt and servitude between him and …show more content…
Prospero, under his established colonial island and manufactured ideological structure and roles, believes that he rightfully controls this island and then creates roles, shown through Caliban and Ariel, to pursue his ambitions on the island and perpetuate his power upheld through magic. Prospero views magic as superior to all else, and creates an entire society and ideological structure surround this perception on this island, exemplifying colonial and ideological
All that Prospero knows, his ideology that he is born into and therefore, according to Althusser, is always subject to (Althusser 699), is how to be a duke and be in power. Therefore, upon his traveling to this new island, Prospero saw an opportunity in the real condition of an inhabited island and his loss of dukedom in Milan. Prospero establishes a relationship to this real condition before him, creating subject roles in Ariel and Caliban in order to serve the purposes of his real condition. In Althusser’s “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” he describes that an ideology is the imaginary relationship to a real condition (Althusser 695), and such is Prospero’s island. His island is created as a result of Prospero’s own ideological subjectivity to power, and his beliefs that magic signifies power. This belief is evident in one interaction with Ariel, in which Prospero recounts the story of his arrival to the island and his rescuing of Ariel from the control of Sycorax, saying “It was mine art” (Shakespeare 117), art being his magic, that saved him, therefore establishing a relationship of debt and servitude between him and …show more content…
Prospero, under his established colonial island and manufactured ideological structure and roles, believes that he rightfully controls this island and then creates roles, shown through Caliban and Ariel, to pursue his ambitions on the island and perpetuate his power upheld through magic. Prospero views magic as superior to all else, and creates an entire society and ideological structure surround this perception on this island, exemplifying colonial and ideological