“What are you reading?” “Anything I can find.” Old newspapers, and sometimes borrowed books. I read slowly; I didn’t learn well, but I read. “Have you read Shakespeare?” Her eyes widened. “Yes, miss. There’s an old copy in the library that no one touches.”
I read to her at night, when everyone is asleep. “What are her plays?” “Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Tempest.” Her voice became more animated despite herself.
“The Tempest is my favorite.” Prospero controls the island with magic, Ariel longs for freedom, Caliban is treated like a monster but perhaps he is more human than anyone else. He stopped suddenly. “Excuse me, miss.”
“I talk a lot.” “No.” I smiled, a genuine smile for the first time in this strange conversation. “Keep talking. Tell me about Caliban.”
And something extraordinary happened. Josiah, the enormous slave known as the Beast, began to discuss Shakespeare with an intelligence that would have impressed university professors.
He said: “Caliban is called the beast, but Shakespeare shows us that he was enslaved, that his island was stolen from him, and that he was deprived of his mother’s charm.”
The monster is called Prospero, but Prospero came to the island and claimed ownership of everything, including Caliban himself.
So who is the real monster? “You are looking at Caliban with eyes of pity.” “I see Caliban as a human being.” He was treated in a way that is not worthy of a human being, but he is still a human being. He was silent for a moment. “As…”
“Like slaves.” “Yes,” I finally said.
Leave a Comment