Sunday, October 3, 2010

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In the discussions of The Tempest, one controversial issue has been about whether or not Shakespeare intended to address the issue of imperialism and colonialism in his play. For example, Aime Cesaire's A Tempest portrays the play in a completely different way than Shakespeare intended. Although the plot follows the same basic premise and the cast of characters is for the most part the same, Cesaire changes the dialogue between the characters and change the way that the play is portrayed. In A Tempest Caliban tells Prospero, “Call me X. That would be best. Like a man without a name. Or, to be more precise, a man whose name has been stolen.”  In this line Cesaire is referring to Malcolm X, which is his way of comparing Caliban to the African American slaves. Cesaire hinted at the idea of imperialism a lot more than Shakespeare did in the original play. On the other hand, George Will argues that literature always reflects political beliefs. Will states that “The Tempest reflects the imperialist rape of the Third World.” After looking into both critics’ ideas I can see that Cesaire was able to change the meaning of the play just by changing the way that the characters talked to each other throughout the play. The author made the play reflect imperialism. Will believes that politics can change the way that people read and analyze certain text. He also argues that some critics over analyze some literature and change the authors meaning.
            I am very confused with this week’s blog so I am hoping that we have to write comments to each other this week so that I can get some other opinions on this stuff because right now I am not sure if I am doing this write.

1 comment:

  1. I think that you'll WRITE a great essay, as usual, because you did this blog RIGHT. (I love jillian) :)

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