The Journey Versus the Destination

The Journey Versus the Destination

Throughout our reading of The Tempest, Prospero’s character has made it a challenge for me to like the play. He is the hero of the story, undoubtedly, and unlike the tragedy of Hamlet, where we can rest assured that the main character of questionable morality will meet his end, this play qualifies as a comedy. It’s difficult for me to like the fact that Prospero’s story ends more-or-less happily when he’s such a controlling and manipulative character.

I admit, Prospero does have his reasons for acting the way he does. He was Duke of Milan, so he probably grew accustomed to being treated as royalty and having people obey his every whim. Then, as he explains to Miranda in Act I, “In my false brother/Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,/Like a good parent, did beget of him/A falsehood, in its contrary as great/As my trust was” (1.2.64-64). He refers to the time when he was uprooted from his place as Duke by his brother Antonio, which is meant to arouse our sympathy as readers. However, Prospero states in the same passage that he was immersed in his own studies of magic and was “thus neglecting worldly ends,” so it seems he was a negligent Duke and might not have deserved his position in the first place. I’m sure he feels justified in trying to regain his power, but I’m not sure I agree with him.

Aside from the betrayal by his brother, I don’t know if Prospero has a lot of justification for his actions. It is admirable that Prospero rescues Ariel, who the witch Sycorax confined “By help of her more potent ministers,/And in her unmitigable rage/Into a cloven pine” (1.2.276-279). However, after this rescue he demands that Ariel act as little more than a slave. Prospero also basically enslaves Caliban, Sycorax’s son and the owner of the island, and while Caliban is not a very likeable character, I don’t think he deserves to be “subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island” (3.2.40-41). Prospero didn’t think Antonio was right to take over in Milan, so I don’t see why he thinks his subjugation of Caliban is any better.

Even if we rely on the shaky reasoning that Ariel and Caliban are less than human and it is all right to treat them as slaves, it is hard to justify Prospero’s dominance over and manipulation of Miranda and Ferdinand. Prospero manipulates them in such a way that Ferdinand ends up taking over Caliban’s duties, acting the part of a slave himself. As the son of the King of Naples, Ferdinand should be well above the level of a monstrous native or a familiar spirit. Yet Prospero claims he doesn’t believe Ferdinand’s claims about being the heir to Naples and treats him the same as any other servant. Even in Shakespeare’s time, this treatment should have been problematic.

At the end of the play things are apparently set right. Prospero, regaining his place as Duke of Milan, forgives the men who stole the title from him. He says he will give up the magic he used to manipulate everyone in the play, agrees to let Ferdinand marry Miranda, and releases Ariel and Caliban from their duties. We may end with order, but it feels more like a “end justifies the means” situation. Consenting to Ferdinand’s marriage to Miranda and setting Ariel and Caliban free at the end of the play doesn’t justify Prospero’s treatment of them until that point. It doesn’t feel like he learns the error of his ways and feels remorse; instead it sounds more like he feels he’s justified in treating the other characters so horribly and only changes the way he treats them because he’s in a good mood after reclaiming his dukedom. Of course, the idea that a journey matters more than its destination probably wasn’t as prevalent in Shakespeare’s time, so it might just be a modern reading that makes the play problematic. I do have to wonder about how Prospero’s character would have been received when The Tempest was first written, though.