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
Leggs stands up to give the report. He starts out by saying that while he has a team, in the play Caliban has no one; even his temporary allies turn on him or try to exploit him. His mother wasn’t perfect, but she’s the only person who loved him. Other actors nod, and Felix senses that “tough though fallible mothers are being remembered.” After her death, Caliban was kind to Prospero, but now the magician is trying to enslave him.
At the beginning of the course, all the actors identified instinctively with Caliban. While that’s still the case, the villain’s isolation now points out the positive aspects in their lives—like the community they’ve developed through this class. Even in his predicaments, Caliban represents the prisoners’ increasing empowerment.
Themes
His team has mulled over various outcomes for Caliban. He could be left on the island as its king, but this would hardly be satisfying with no one around to rule. In another narrative, he sails to Naples with the others; Antonio kills Prospero and rapes Miranda, but he locks Caliban in the hold and puts him on show for money once they reach Italy. They tell everyone he’s a “savage from the jungle” and the people hate him and throw things at him. After a while, he catches a disease to which he’s not immune and dies.
In this outcome, Caliban’s fate reflects the exploitation and murder suffered by countless native people at the hands of colonialist systems. It’s much like SnakeEye’s prediction that power can only belong to those villainous enough to acquire it—but the Hag-Seed team adds a layer of social commentary to their report.
Themes
However, the team decided this outcome was far too grim—after, all everyone else gets a second chance at the end, so why not Caliban? Struck by one of Prospero’s lines, in which he says “this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine,” the team decides that Prospero is actually Caliban’s father, having seduced Sycorax—who, after all, has magic powers just like him. Prospero leaves Sycorax to her fate, but when he gets to the island he immediately recognizes his son. While he doesn’t want to formally acknowledge him, he tries to befriend him and teach him some skills—until Caliban starts chasing Miranda, after which he turns on him and enslaves him.
While the prisoners generally dislike Prospero, this narrative gives equal weight to the wizard’s strengths and failings—he tries to be a good parent when he discovers Caliban, but in the end he’s not brave enough to acknowledge his paternity and fails his son. In his honest but crucially unsuccessful efforts as a parent, this version of Prospero is very reminiscent of Felix himself—much more so than the omnipotent image he himself tries to project.
Themes
Still, Prospero can see that his son’s bad qualities—anger and hunger for revenge—are exactly what make them alike. So after the play he tries to make up for his behavior, giving Caliban some new clothes and teaching him manners; now people think of him as “rugged,” not ugly. When they get back to Milan, Prospero helps Caliban get his start as a musician, and his career takes off. He has a band called “Hag-Seed and the Things of Darkness” and becomes famous all over the world. Everyone loves the report, and the prisoners stand up, chanting Hag-Seed’s name.
It’s interesting that the characteristics Prospero and Caliban share—feelings of anger and revenge—are also part of what bind Felix and the prisoners together. One of the reasons Felix has been so successful as a teacher is that he doesn’t try to force the prisoners to forget about their unpalatable feelings, but teaches them to harness them for their own benefit.
Themes
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