Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hag-Seed, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Theater and The Tempest
Vengeance
Imprisonment and Marginalization
Transformation and Change
Grief
Summary
Analysis
The goblins take their captives back to the main room; by now the drugs are wearing off, and they’re settling down. Everyone is assembled except for Anne-Marie and Frederick. To a magnificent drum roll, Felix finally appears, arrayed in his magic garment. He greets them with one of Prospero’s speeches but then breaks character to thank Lonnie for his good behavior. Everyone is astonished to see him, as he’s been so long absent from their lives. Sal asks if he’s even a real person.
It’s important that Felix chooses to appear in the magic cloak, a garment that emblematizes both his failures and his determination to overcome them. In a sense, he’s reminding the politicians of his previous defeat even as he seems omnipotent in this moment. He’s finally chosen to embrace the possibilities for success and failure that are intrinsic to his own character and everyone else’s.
Themes
Tony alone is immediately angry, accusing Felix of sabotaging him, and threatening to end the literacy program. Felix waves away their threats and starts making his own demands: he wants his job at the festival back, and he instructs Sal and Tony to tell the world that after experiencing the benefits of “artistic immersion” they are guaranteeing five more years of funding for the program. After this, Tony must resign and Sebert must take himself out of the leadership race.
Felix’s first demand, the return of his job, benefits himself; however, the other aspects of his revenge are actually good deeds towards others. By saving the theater program, he’s helping to create a healthier prison environment for his students, and by removing dirty politicians from power he’s doing a service to the public at large.
Themes
To enforce his demands, Felix reveals that he’s captured all their drug-induced raving on video—an embarrassing spectacle that would damage careers if released to the public. Addressing Tony directly, he reminds him about the “fascinating conversation” he had with Sebert while the others were asleep. Finally, Tony appears defeated and admits he has no choice but to acquiesce. Felix adds that he wants an early release for his special-effects technician.
The politicians entered the prison believing in a strict delineation between themselves and those deemed “criminal” by society. Now, having unwittingly participated in criminal activity on tape, they are stripped of the security and self-righteousness such a worldview provides.
Themes
Sal immediately agrees to the agreement, while Tony and Sebert stare resentfully at him. Lonnie asks if the riot was real at all, but Felix ignores him. Gesturing to Sal, who is still worried about Frederick, he says he has something to show him.
Felix again refuses to make definitive statements about the “reality” of theater, preferring to focus on its ability to reveal deep truths even as it depends on illusions.
Themes
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In their cell, Anne-Marie tells Frederick to act surprised when his father enters. When Sal enters the cell, father and son embrace eagerly; pulling away, Frederick introduces his father to “my new partner, Anne-Marie Greenland.” Anne-Marie shakes Sal’s hand, while Frederick eagerly asks her if she’s free for dinner that night. Felix shrugs, saying that no one can fight “true romance.”
When they entered the prison, Sal and Frederick felt uneasy with each other; although their worldviews are still very different, each is filled with a new appreciation for the other because of Felix’s revenge. With his reference to “true romance,” Felix points out that illusion can lead to genuine and positive feelings.
Themes
Leaving the cast behind, the politicians are escorted back to the prison lobby. They’re scheduled to attend an after-party with the Warden and other officials: doubtless a calmer affair than what they’ve just endured. Felix wonders if they will make any allusions to the “lockdown” or their hallucinations. Probably not—instead, they’ll compliment the Warden on the programs he’s running, and promise to continue his funding. Sal can still preserve his political career, while Tony and Sebert will keep quiet in order to secure positions on corporate boards once they retire.
After falling victims to his play, the politicians essentially have to perform another when they attend the Warden’s party. Felix’s musings on their probable actions reflect the extent to which the “reality” of public life is in fact a kind of play, in which each actor tries to create the most compelling and self-serving illusions.
Themes
Frederick and Anne-Marie follow them to the reception, but first she kisses Felix on the cheek and says she wishes he really was her dad—he would be an improvement on her actual father. She speaks glowingly of Frederick, saying that he got his part right away.
Felix is used to thinking of himself as a deficient parent. Mentoring Anne-Marie gives him an opportunity to redeem his past behavior and improve his own self-conception.
Themes
Felix and 8Handz gather up all the speakers and videos they’ve distributed across the rooms. As 8Handz reviews the video footage, he says that he’s hearing a faint singing in his headphones. Someone is saying “merrily, merrily” over and over again. Felix recognizes this from one of Ariel’s speeches, and he knows that Miranda is saying her lines.
In that she seems to be appearing to other people, Miranda is at her most “real” right now—but paradoxically, these are also the moments in which she seems most inscrutable to Felix and farthest from his control.
Themes
However, 8Handz corrects him: the voice is singing the children’s rhyme “merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” Felix used to sing that song to Miranda when she was a child. He feels chilled, and to cover up his unease he tells 8Handz that he was thinking of inserting that rhyme into the backstory, as a rhyme Prospero sang to Miranda as a child. He asks to try the headphones, but he can’t hear any singing.
The fact that 8Handz perceives Miranda’s song makes her seem real, but the song’s words suggest that her “life”—inasmuch as she exists to Felix—is only a fiction. This pivotal moment juxtaposes Miranda’s importance to Felix with her fundamentally illusory nature.
Themes
In the darkness, Felix walks towards his car and drives away from the prison. He’ll be eating dinner alone as usual, unless Miranda appears. He’s succeeded in his quest, but he still feels it’s been a “letdown.” One of Prospero’s lines – “the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance”—occurs to him, and he thinks it’s Miranda speaking to him.
Felix has always secretly hoped that The Tempest would bring Miranda back to him—since it can’t actually reincarnate her, the play is necessarily a “letdown.” Its ultimate result is not erasing Felix’s grief, but forcing him to confront it.
Themes
