Hag-Seed in Around the World in 80 Books

Nov 22, 2016 marianne rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bookclub, ebooks

“This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.”
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As he is gearing up for his fifth Shakespeare production at Fletcher Correctional Institute, Felix Phillips, our modern-day Prospero, argues that the Tempest is in fact a play about prisons, making it all the more pertinent to the inmates who will be staging this play under the Literacy Through Literature program he teaches there. He is given the green light and thus begins the Shakespearian “play within the play” device in Margaret
“This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.”
-----------------

As he is gearing up for his fifth Shakespeare production at Fletcher Correctional Institute, Felix Phillips, our modern-day Prospero, argues that the Tempest is in fact a play about prisons, making it all the more pertinent to the inmates who will be staging this play under the Literacy Through Literature program he teaches there. He is given the green light and thus begins the Shakespearian “play within the play” device in Margaret Atwood’s skillful present-day retelling of the Tempest.

Felix’s pitch for the Tempest takes place a few chapters in after a somewhat flat intro section where he is banished from his theater house, where he is director. It’s a necessary plot development that is glossed over in the original Tempest but here provides us with Felix’s background story. Once the novel reaches the correctional facility, which acts as the island upon which Prospero has been exiled, Atwood’s retelling of the Tempest really takes off. She remains true to the original play, but does not shy away from employing other devices to make her story fit into our 21st century. For one, she doesn’t hesitate to split the Shakespearean roles across two characters; the example of Miranda is the most straightforward and also the craftiest. Miranda is primarily divided between Felix’s own daughter Miranda, tragically deceased at age 3 but still present in the form of a delusion in Felix’s mind some twelve years later, and Anne-Marie Greenland, who plays Miranda in the prison play and fulfills the various aspects of Miranda’s character that Felix’s dead daughter cannot. (view spoiler)

The plot is entertaining and suspenseful and holds its own. But it’s the profound and very deliberate central message that Atwood has intertwined into the correctional setting that has really left an impression on me. The title of the book is Hag-Seed, a nickname for Caliban. He has admitted to trying to or wanting to rape Miranda, and so Prospero punishes him by enslaving him and generally treating him very poorly.

Is Caliban then not our own prison population, a thing of darkness that we must one day acknowledge ours? Are we not responsible for turning persons who have committed crimes or leaned too greatly towards bad behavior into greater monsters by punishing them further and exiling them? These are the questions Atwood is really asking us to examine and ponder.

After the inmates have staged their play, Felix has but one assignment left for them; to write an essay on what happens to their character after the play has unfolded. Leggs plays Caliban and offers these three scenarios:
1) Caliban stays on the island, is alone, but finally the king of his kingdom
2) Caliban gets put into a cage and humiliated for the rest of his life
3) Caliban’s father finally recognizes him as his son, apologizes, cleans him up and teaches him things, asks that the slate be wiped clean, supports him. In this scenario, Caliban has a successful career as a musician.

It’s pretty clear what Atwood is saying here about our correctional system and what she sees as our best hope, or option, for the millions of souls locked up in our jails. We must recognize them as our own, embrace them and help lift them to their full potential.

I really admired how Atwood was able to fold this major theme into the plot without ever divulging her message in plain English. What great insight she had on this play, and what a powerful way to transpose this story and the message together into our modern day.
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