Tempest Monstrosity Essay

There are many examples of monstrosity that come up in Shakespeare’s Tempest, the most obvious examples being the wicked witch Sycorax and her son, Caliban. However, other monsters appear at the end of the play, like the strange shapes that bring in the banquet and when Ariel appears as the harpy. Sycorax, an unscrupulous witch that ruled the island after her banishment from Algeria, imprisoned Ariel in a tree when he wouldn’t carry out her terrible commands. Although only mentioned briefly in the play, she is portrayed as monstrous due to her vicious nature and her practicing of sorcery. However, her main source of monstrosity actually comes from the fact that she birthed Caliban, who is said to be the product of her relations with the Devil.
Prospero and Sycorax were banished from their homes, and ended up on the island with a child. Prospero had Ariel carry out his commands and punished Caliban in the same way that Sycorax punished Ariel for not doing her bidding. Sycorax’s dark magic is reminiscent of Medea but Prospero’s speech in Act V parallels Medea’s speech in Metamorphoses. By comparing himself to Medea, he implicates a similarity between himself and Sycorax. The play, as told from a colonial viewpoint suggests we are meant to accept Prospero as the innocent protagonist who has been evicted from his home, even as he controls his own daughter and punishes a slave. The monsters in the play, Caliban and Sycorax, illustrate how hypocritical negative views of uncivilized brutish slaves by those that treated them inhumanely. Read in a postcolonial light, Caliban serves to highlight the stigma surrounding deformity, as initial judgement of him comes simply because of his monstrous appearance. However, his main role is as an example of slavery and colonial attitudes towards the cultural, racial and alien