The Theme Of Utopia In The Tempest By William Shakespeare

Prospero, the protagonist of The Tempest, and the Duke of Milan, is wronged by his brother, Antonio. Ever since Antonio usurped Prospero, Prospero has been seeking revenge because of his exile on a lonely island, therefore, everything fell into place when Prospero caused the storm with his magic, causing Antonio’s ship to crash onto the island. On the island, Prospero has daughter and two servants with him. Both of his servants came from the witch Sycorax. Ariel had been trapped in a tree on the island by Sycorax and Prospero came to rescue, for ‘his’ salvation, Ariel owed Prospero his servitude until Prospero released him of his duties. Caliban, the “savage,” and Native American of the story, was the son of Sycorax. The Tempest, written by William Shakespeare, …show more content…
In this play, Shakespeare creates a world of imagination and illusion, which is basically a competition between the “real world” and the “new world.” Thomas More’s Utopian society is a place where surpassed aggression, hate, war, and crime do not exist, instead there are peaceful communities that coexist and work together. Gonzalo, another noble character in The Tempest, establishes his own idea of Utopia. Gonzalo illustrates, “All things in common nature should produce without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony, sword, pike, knife, gun, or any need for any engine would I not have; but nature should bring forth of its own kind, all foison, all abundance, to feed my innocent people” (Act 2 Scene 1 Lines 134-139.) The characters that Gonzalo proposes this idea to practically shut him down for it and make fun of him for it. In his Utopia, Gonzalo wants absence of status, property, and profession, which he assumes ia unity and uniformity of humans. Shakespeare introduces the fact that in any society, there is always bad in the good, therefore, the reader can see that problems can arise in a Utopian