What is Prospero’s fatal flaw?
His drive for revenge? His lack of empathy? His hatred of Antonio? I think Shakespeare actually poured a lot of himself into Prospero. Prospero’s fatal flaw, much like Shakespeare’s, is that he is a playwright. He is obsessed by the humanities.
Prospero tells Miranda that his obsession with books was precisely what stopped him from noticing that his brother, Antonio, was plotting to overthrow him.
And Prospero the prime duke, being so reputed
In dignity, and for the liberal arts
Without a parallel; those being all my study,
The government I cast upon my brother
And to my state grew stranger, being transported
And rapt in secret studies.
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2
He was so obsessed with reading that he didn’t get out and run his country. I think that’s a pretty relatable flaw, but I’ll get back to that.
During the play, Prospero’s desire for revenge is secondary to his desire to orchestrate. He directs the action on the island, writing a story of hatred, revenge, forgiveness and romantic love. In order to achieve this he uses magic, which he learns through his “books.” It seems to me like this magic is just a metaphor for the theatrical magic of words, created by Shakespeare himself.
When I studied the Tempest at school, I wrote an essay arguing how Prospero overcomes his fatal flaw of revenge through forgiveness. However, after years of reflecting on the play, I’ve come to a different conclusion. I think forgiving Antonio and freeing Caliban and Arial was part of his plan all along – it was part of the play he was directing and the story he was writing. Prospero never overcomes his fatal flaw. Perhaps he physically drowns his book by the end, but his obsession has gotten worse – now he’s writing the book.
I think this reading makes much more sense. While studying the text at school, I was always perplexed by why Prospero suddenly turned around and forgave everyone. There was no arc, no gradual discovery, He just went from evil to benevolent in a matter of seconds, based on a single comment by Ariel.
The problem is Prospero’s transformation never seemed very human to People don’t usually turn from bloodthirsty revenge to forgiveness when someone says, “if you saw these people, you’d feel sorry for them.” In fact the normal human response is “Excellent, my plan is working!” One of the reasons Shakespeare is such an utterly brilliant playwright, is he expresses the human condition throughout his work. He shows people as they are. I am not convinced We see a real human in Prospero’s unexpected moral transformation.
If Prospero didn’t really, genuinely, authentically forgive his brother and the shipwrecked Venetians, then perhaps the play doesn’t have a happy ending. Prospero never overcame his fatal flaws of revenge and obsession with books and power, they overcame him. His forgiveness is not altruistic, but part of his plot to recover his Dukedom and marry off his daughter to a wealthy prince.
Just before I wrote this I was sitting at a cafe bookstore, thinking, “I would love to come here everyday and spend all day reading books.” But another thought keeps nagging at me, “maybe reading all day is dangerous, perhaps there can be sinister consequences for living life entirely in books.”
For somebody like me who thinks reading and education are integral to creating good people and a good society, there is a risk of becoming too absorbed with the intellectual. Reading should incite our action; our love for others, our love for the environment and our love for God. Reading should make us go out and help the needy, the marginalised and oppressed in our society and world. As James says:
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
James 1:22-24 (NIV)
So perhaps that is why I am creating this blog (what blog? I am writing this on a note on my Mac with some vague idea that this idea could start a blog). Because I truly believe literature is important, but I don’t want it to become a means of indulgence for me. I want to keep focusing on how literature can help us improve as individuals. I also want to keep myself accountable to only looking at literature where it is useful, and using it as a springboard for the truly important stuff: helping people, giving voices to the oppressed and for me personally, showing the love of Jesus through the way I live.
arnot.art 