Theater and The Tempest
A retelling of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed tells the story of a director named Felix who, after being ousted from his job at a prominent theater festival, begins teaching Shakespeare in a prison, eventually using his new position to get back at his old enemies. Both novel and play center around a protagonist who does his best to control the direction of the plot and the actions of those around…
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Vengeance
Set in a idyllic Ontario town, Hag-Seed is Margaret Atwood’s retelling of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Just as the play’s protagonist, Prospero, seeks revenge on the man who steals his kingdom, Felix wants to get back at Tony, a former colleague who supplants him as director of a prestigious theater festival. For years after this act of betrayal, Felix is dominated by anger and bitterness. As his desire for revenge becomes more obsessive…
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Imprisonment and Marginalization
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Margaret Atwood’s retelling Hag-Seed, most of the characters spend time trapped in literal and metaphorical prisons. Shakespeare’s protagonist Prospero is trapped on a desert island after losing his kingdom in a coup; Atwood’s equivalent, Felix, exiles himself to a remote cabin after being fired from his job. However, the two men’s reactions to their imprisonment are starkly divergent. Prospero uses his magic powers to imprison others, entrapping…
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Transformation and Change
Like the play on which it’s based, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Hag-Seed is a novel full of transformations, in which characters constantly change roles, ascend to power, or fall into disgrace. The novel’s protagonist, Felix, initially sees such transformations as inherently false and unjust; he devotes most of the novel to returning himself and his adversary, Tony, to their original states. However, as his revenge plot progresses it becomes evident that rather than…
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Grief
The beginning of Hag-Seed is marked by two serious losses for the protagonist, Felix: his job as director of a famous theater festival, which his assistant Tony steals, and his young daughter Miranda, who has recently died of meningitis. Understandably, Felix addresses his grief by plotting to reclaim what he has lost. He devotes a decade of his life to avenging himself against Tony and getting his job back, and in the meantime…
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