Discuss, with the use of appropriate quotations, the effect on the reader of Cesaire’s alteration of Shakespeare’s The Tempest in his adaption A Tempest: paying particular attention to Cesaire’s characterisation of Prospero and Caliban, and to Cesaire’s changes to the plot of the ending of his play.
Cesaire employs Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a vehicle to voice his opinion on colonial discourse in an attempt to educate and inform his readers of black consciousness and Negretude in his adaption A Tempest. In his alteration Cesaire appropriates and explores the relationship between Prospero; the colonizer and his colonial subject; Caliban by adjusting their language and altering the plot of the ending of the original text. Thereby Cesaire’s Caliban becomes the voice of black consciousness: “a concrete (as opposed to just an abstract idea of freedom) coming to consciousness of identity, of what the blacks are- a race with great value and a history to proud to be proud of” (Fei 118) as opposed to Shakespeare’s Caliban; a mere “savage and deformed slave” (Cesaire xxxii). In Shakespeare’s The Tempest Prospero is seen as a “noble” (1.2 120) and all-knowing father with uplifting characteristics that endows him the power to control nature (Fei 119). In both plays Prospero takes the moral high-ground and ignorantly believes that he has saved Caliban by teaching him their “language” (1.2 362), noting “what would you be without me?” (Cesaire 17). In the original text Caliban is