Caliban represents untamed nature in conflict with civilization.

He intuitively understands that

Prospero's power comes from his books; thus the books are to become the first victims of his
rebellion. Prospero's books represent oppression to Caliban because all that Prospero's
civilization and books have to offer is slavery.
Both Caliban and Gonzalo see their ideal worlds as untouched by the confinements
of civilization. In both visions, nature provides whatever is needed, and mankind has
little effect on the island's existence. But there is one substantial difference. Where
Gonzalo would make himself king, Caliban dreams of living in peaceful isolation,
with no king to abuse him. Yet, to secure his freedom from Prospero, Caliban would
subordinate himself to Stefano, who would take Prospero's place as ruler.

Juxtapositioning-The Tempest builds its rich aura of magical and mysterious implication is
through the use of doubles: scenes, characters, and speeches that mirror each other by either
resemblance or contrast. This scene is an example of doubling: almost everything in it echoes
Act II, scene i. In this scene, Caliban, Trinculo, and Stephano wander aimlessly about the island,
and Stephano muses about the kind of island it would be if he ruled itI will kill this man
[Prospero]. His daughter and I will be King and Queen . . . and Trinculo and thyself [Caliban]
shall be viceroys (III.ii.101 103 )just as Gonzalo had done while wandering with Antonio
and Sebastian in Act II, scene i. At the end of Act III, scene ii, Ariel enters, invisible, and causes
strife among the group, first with his voice and then with music, leading the men astray in order
to thwart Antonio and Sebastians plot against Alonso. The power-hungry servants Stephano and
Trinculo thus become rough parodies of the power-hungry courtiers Antonio and Sebastian. All
four men are now essentially equated with Caliban, who is, as Alonso and Antonio once were,
simply another usurper.
But Caliban also has a moment in this scene to become more than a mere usurper: his striking
and apparently heartfelt speech about the sounds of the island. Reassuring the others not to worry
about Ariels piping, Caliban says:
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. (III.ii.130 138 )
In this speech, we are reminded of Calibans very close connection to the islanda connection
we have seen previously only in his speeches about showing Prospero or Stephano which
streams to drink from and which berries to pick (I.ii.333 347 and II.ii.152 164 ). After all,
Caliban is not only a symbolic native in the colonial allegory of the play. He is also an actual
native of the island, having been born there after his mother Sycorax fled there. This ennobling
monologueennobling because there is no servility in it, only a profound understanding of the
magic of the islandprovides Caliban with a moment of freedom from Prospero and even from
his drunkenness. In his anger and sadness, Caliban seems for a moment to have risen above his
wretched role as Stephanos fool. Throughout much of the play, Shakespeare seems to side with
powerful figures such as Prospero against weaker figures such as Caliban, allowing us to think,
with Prospero and Miranda, that Caliban is merely a monster. But in this scene, he takes the
extraordinary step of briefly giving the monster a voice. Because of this short speech, Caliban
becomes a more understandable character, and even, for the moment at least, a sympathetic one.
Themes
Power and control and the nature of just and productive leadership.
Act 1 Scene 2: Prospero tells Miranda of his betrayal by Alonso and Antonio and explains that
he has instructed Ariel to shipwreck the King's party; Ariel challenges Prospero; Prospero
lambastes Caliban and punishes him for his defiance. Act 2 Scene 1: Antonio and Sebastian
discuss the idea of conscience and attempt to murder Alonso and Gonzalo. Act 2 Scene 2:
Caliban acquires a new master, Stephano, who calls him 'Monster.' Act 5 Scene 1: Ariel reports
that he has charmed the noblemen into immobility as Prospero instructed him to do. Prospero
plans to break his magic staff and drown his books after this last piece of his revenge plan is
complete.
Betrayal, revenge and forgiveness, the consequences of each and the journey from turbulence to
harmony. Some related scenes:

Act 1 Scene 2: Prospero tells Miranda of his betrayal by Alonso and Antonio and explains that
he has instructed Ariel to shipwreck the King's party. Act 3 Scene 2: Caliban, Stephano and
Trinculo plot to murder Prospero. Act 3 Scene 3: In response to Ariel's magic banquet Alonso
feels remorse for his past behaviour while Sebastian and Antonio continue their plotting. Act 4
Scene 1: Prospero thwarts Caliban's plot to murder him and tells Ariel to inflict them with
cramps, convulsions and pinches. Act 5 Scene 1: Prospero releases the noblemen from their
charm, welcomes Gonzalo, forgives Alonso, and privately warns Antonio and Sebastian. With
provisos he will forgive Caliban, Stephano and Trinculo.

The Contrast Between Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest

From The Tempest. Ed. Henry Norman Hudson. New York: Ginn and Co., 1909.
Ariel
Nowhere in Shakespeare's plays are two more sharply contrasted characters than Ariel
and Caliban. Both are equally preternatural; Ariel is the air spirit, Caliban the earth spirit.
Ariel's very being is spun of melody and fragrance; if a feeling soul and an intelligent will
are the warp, these are the woof of his exquisite texture. He has just enough of humanheartedness to know how he would feel were he human, and a proportionable sense of
that gratitude which has been aptly called the memory of the heart; hence he needs to
be often reminded of his obligations, but he is religiously true to them so long as he
remembers them. His delicacy of nature is nowhere more apparent than in his sympathy
with right and good; the instant he comes within their touch he follows them without
reserve, and he will suffer any torments rather than "act the earthy and abhorr'd
commands" that go against his moral grain. And what a merry little personage he is
withal; as if his being were cast together in an impulse of play, and he would spend his
whole life in one perpetual frolic. Small wonder that Prospero calls him "my tricksy
spirit," V, i, 226.
But the main ingredients of Ariel's zephyr-like constitution are shown in his leading
inclinations, as he naturally has most affinity for that of which he is framed. Moral ties
are irksome to him; they are not his proper element When he enters their sphere, he
feels them to be a holy deed, but, were he free, he would keep out of their reach and
follow the circling seasons in their course, and always dwell merrily in the fringes of
summer. Prospero quietly intimates his instinctive dread of the cold by threatening to
make him "howl away twelve winters." And the chief joy of his promised release from
service is that he will then be free to live all the year through under the soft rule of
summer, with its flowers and fragrancies and melodies. He is indeed an arrant little
epicure of perfume and sweet sounds.
A markworthy feature of Ariel is that his power does not stop with the physical forces of
nature, but reaches also to the hearts and consciences of men, so that by his music he
can kindle or assuage the deepest griefs of the one, and strike the keenest pangs of

remorse into the other. This comes out in the different effects of his art upon Ferdinand
and the guilty king, as related by the men themselves:
Ariel, too, has some of the magic potency of old god Cupid. It is through some witchcraft
of his that Ferdinand and Miranda are surprised into a mutual rapture so that Prospero
notes at once how "at the first sight they have changed eyes," and "are both in either's
power:" All which is indeed just what Prospero wanted, yet he is startled at the result;
that fine issue of nature outruns his thought, and he takes care forthwith lest it work too
fast:
Ariel's powers and functions entide him to be called Prospero's prime minister. Through
his agency Prospero's thoughts become things, his volitions events. And yet, strangely
and diversely as Ariel's nature is elemented and composed, with touches akin to several
orders of being, there is such a self-consistency about him, he is so cut out in individual
distinctness, and so rounded in with personal attributes, that contemplation freely and
easily rests upon him as an object. He is by no means an abstract idea personified, or
any sort of intellectual diagram, but a veritable person; and we have a personal feeling
towards the dear creature, and would fain knit him into the living circle of our human
affections and make him a familiar playfellow of the heart.
Caliban
If Caliban strikes us as a more wonderful creation than Ariel, it is probably because he
has more in common with us, without being in any proper sense human. He represents,
both in body and soul, a sort of intermediate nature between man and brute. Though he
has all the attributes of humanity from the moral downwards, so that his nature touches
and borders upon the sphere of moral life, the result but approves his exclusion from
such life in that it brings him to recognize moral law only as making for self. He has
intelligence of seeming wrong in what is done to him, but no conscience of what is
wrong in his own doings. But the magical presence of spirits has cast into the caverns of
his brain some faint reflection of a better world; he has taken in some of the epiphanies
that throng the enchanted island. It is a most singular and significant stroke in the
delineation that sleep seems to loosen the fetters of his soul and lift him above himself.
It seems as if in his passive state the voice of truth and good vibrated down to his soul
and stopped there, being unable to kindle any answering tones within, so that in his
waking hours they are to him but as the memory of a dream:
Here is revealed the basal poetry in Caliban s nature, but it is significant that when
Prospero and Miranda seek to educate him the result is to increase his grossness and
malignity of disposition. Schlegel compares his mind to a dark cave into which the light
of knowledge falling neither illuminates nor warms, but only serves to put in motion the
poisonous vapors generated there.
Caliban's most remarkable characteristic is the perfect originality of his thoughts and
manners. Though his disposition is framed of grossness and malignity, there is nothing
vulgar or commonplace about him. His whole character is developed from within, not
impressed from without, the effect of Prosperous instructions having been to make him

all the more himself, and there being perhaps no soil in his nature for conventional vices
and knaveries to take root and grow in. Hence the almost classic dignity of his behavior
compared with that of the drunken sailors. In his simplicity, indeed, he at first mistakes
them for gods who "bear celestial liquor," and they wax merry enough at the "credulous
monster," but in his vigor of thought and purpose he soon conceives a scorn of their
childish interest in trinkets and gewgaws, and the savage of the woods seems nobility
itself beside the savages of the city.