The Tempest Research Paper

Shakespeare’s masterpiece The Tempest brings up many interesting topics with colonialism, master and slave relationship, and the vagueness of justice, being some of the most important. The essay notes that The Tempest was written as a criticism of colonialism and concentrates on corroborating this point of view with examples from the text. The sparsely inhabited island, on which most of the events take place, represents an ideal colony for anyone who lands on it and chooses to manage it. When Prospero ended upon the island with his daughter, he found this island an ideal place for school his daughter and expand his own influence, after being his brother and his enemies removed him from a position of a duke of Milan. The witch, named Sycorax,

Her son Caliban, who became Prospero’s slave, previously felt like he was his own king on the island(Tempest I. ii 344-345). In another episode when Gonzalo and Alonso made their future plans, Gonzalo dreamt of building some utopian society on this island and rule over it (Tempest 2.1. 148-156). Subsequently in the story Caliban advises Stephano to kill his master Prospero and immediately Stephano envisions himself as the new ruler on the whole island (tempest 3.2.). He gets extremely emotional about the idea and notes that he would not only kill Prospero, but also take his daughter and become “King and Queen of the island”, making his friend Trinculo and Caliban “the viceroys” (Tempest III.ii.101-103). Subsequently, as it is normal for a colonist, Stephano immediately evaluates the availability of resources and thinks of the ways to take advantage of the spirits that make noises and use them as a source of music and entertainment in his

At the same time the lowliness of the “slaves” and their willingness to serve any master and kill their current master if to give way to the new ruler also supports the idea that in colonies the locals can never be full loyal and if necessary, will quickly switch sides. The whole idea of colonialism although may be noble in theory, especially when one dreams about utopian society as illustrated in the novel, in practice always brings about conflicts of interests, fights, plots, schemes and triumph of only few people, making others lose (Doyle, 83). The Tempest can be a good metaphor for the modern day US aspirations to be the “global cop” and interfere for a noble cause in the affairs of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Northern Africa and other regions. As it turns out there are many other rules willing to challenge the US position in the area and the new forces like ISIS, radical Islam, nationalism or communism always get into play. The locals seldom remain loyal for a long time and usually forget about the price the USA paid for their freedom and local changes. As a result, wherever the USA withdraws, the pro-US government immediately loses power and local support and chaos occurs. It appears that non-interference into the affairs of other states and the policy based solely on