Prospero's Inhumanity In The Tempest

Discovery is a deep-seated notion, enveloping many interconnected elements that concern an individual’s relationship with one’s self and one’s world. Although discoveries involving people and relationships may be confronting and provocative, fundamentally they are concerned with the procurement of wider knowledge and a renewed perspective of the world. William Shakespeare’s pastoral tragicomedy The Tempest explores the implications of Prospero’s transformative discovery through his discovery of his morality when he is confronted by his merciless actions and the suffering he has caused, and Miranda and Ferdinand’s unexpected discovery of love which transcends authority. Comparatively, Tim Winton’s erratic short story Aquifer explores the deeply …show more content…
The power of magic in The Tempest is reflected by its context of a rising interest in enochian magic, which was based on the evocation and commanding of various spirits primarily pioneered by the scholar, astrologer and magician John Dee, who is also believed to be the basis of Prospero’s character. The “art” in the play serves as a catalyst for Prospero’s unexpected and confrontational discovery of the value of forgiveness and redemption, leading him to new worlds and values that challenge his widely-held assumptions and beliefs about human experience. Prospero discovers the power of forgiveness and redemption in V.I, where it is Ariel who brings him to this realisation. Ariel’s sympathetic report of the troubled state of the kings and courtiers allows Prospero to see that “The rarer action is in virtue, than in vengeance” and discover the redemptive power of forgiveness, whereby the juxtaposition in “virtue” and “vengeance” reinforces the significance of the change in Prospero’s mindset. His desire for revenge is tempered by the grief and suffering of others and Prospero is ironically transformed by the very empathy he is attempting to create within those who have wronged him. His soliloquy in which he recalls the ways he's used his art to harness the forces of nature is significant as he is telling the audience about his …show more content…
His inability to enter the swap because of his parents’ orders can be compared to an aquifer, as both are contained below surface: “My parents were always struggling to get me inside something, into shirts and shoes, inside the fence, the neighbourhood, the house, out of the sun or the rain, out of the world itself it often seemed to me.”. The use of listing further highlights the extent of his confinement and his will to break away from this confinement. He compares ‘Alan Mannering’s’ drowning to that of water being sucked in from the surface, seeping into cavities in the land beneath: “I thought of things sucked in, all that surging, sucking water beneath the crust of the wide brown land.”, which is exactly what an aquifer is. However, he defies authority and enters the forbidden swamp. The swamp itself has changed the narrator’s perception of themselves; the simple act of entering the swamp matures them, as evident in “I got off my bike and stepped down into the dried lupins like a man striding through a crowd.”. This maturing is thusly evident in his growing disbelief in the “1194 man with the BBC voice” who told the time, as previously, it is implied that the protagonist enjoyed “listening to the authority in the man’s voice”. This notion of overcoming authority is evident in “By this time I was beginning to have second thoughts about