Caliban (character)
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Caliban is a fictional character in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, a deformed servant to Prospero. He is the son of a witch, Sycorax, who had died before Prospero arrived on the island and from whom Caliban follows the worship of Setebos. Prospero explains his harsh treatment of Caliban by describing how the creature, after initially having been taken into Prospero's family, had lusted after his daughter Miranda and attempted to rape her. Prospero's only means of control, then, is to cause the spirits of the island to pinch Caliban's skin painfully all over his body. In his resentment against Prospero, Caliban takes Stephano, one of the shipwrecked servants, as a god and as his new master after being given some of Stephano's wine, urging him to kill Prospero and become lord of the island. Caliban learns that Stephano is neither a god nor Prospero's equal in the conclusion of the play, however, and Caliban willingly decides to follow Prospero again.
In recent times, Caliban has been used as a symbol by colonial freedom fighters, especially in the West Indies, who have seen him as an aboriginal inhabitant deprived of his land by European colonizers. Caliban is not aboriginal, however, as his mother was born in Africa and only later seized control of the island, oppressing the native sprites who inhabited it.
Although portrayed as a brutal savage, it is significant that Caliban is given one of the most moving speeches in the entire play:
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.
-Act 3, Scene 2
The name "Caliban" is related to "cannibal" and "Carib."
Robert Browning wrote one of his dramatic monologues from the point of view of Caliban, Caliban upon Setebos, in which he views Caliban as a Rousseauean "natural man." Caliban also gives a lengthy monologue in the style of Henry James in W.H. Auden's long poem The Sea and the Mirror, a meditation on the themes of The Tempest.
Fantasy author Tad Williams retells the story of Caliban from his point of view in the short novel Caliban's Hour (1993).
Caliban can also refer to a mythical, deformed figure shaped after the Horned Man and other pagan versions of male fertility/nature spirits. In many Anglo-Saxon legends he takes on such subhuman forms as that of a troll or an ogre.fr:Caliban nl:Caliban