What Does It Mean to Be Free: Opinion Essay

“to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure” (Hamlet 3:2).

This quote from Shakespeare's infamous play Hamlet seems to be echoing to us a message of power. Specifically the power of not just his own play, but of texts as a whole in holding up a mirror up to us, a mirror which reflects our values, virtues, image, and ultimately the ‘very age and body of our time. If we compare texts across time and observe the conversation that arises between the two, we come to see that the mirror reflects worlds that are not so different, showing the collision of the past and future within the present, providing both texts with new meaning. Let’s take Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest - which reflects his Christocentric Jacobean world - and contrast it with Margaret Atwood’s reimagining of the play, Hag-seed, which reflects our own postmodern humanistic world. The Tempest follows a wizard named Prospero and his daughter Miranda as they attempt to escape the island they were stranded on and enact revenge on the people who sent them there. Hag-seed however reimagines the play in our world, where Felix, an ousted theatre director, seeks retribution against the people who betrayed him. Through their protagonists, both texts explore the ideas of freedom and imprisonment, questioning the essence of what it means to be free. Shakespeare uses this questioning to explore the ancient Christian values of redemption through forgiveness, within his own world, commingling ancient attitudes, with the values in his present. Atwood however reimagines the same question through a modern lens, providing new meaning towards the cyclical nature of freedom and imprisonment, and forgiveness and redemption through Felix, Miranda, and the prison.

Hamlet’s metaphoric mirror resonates in his own examination of his world within The Tempest. Created in the midst of the cultural revolution that was the Renaissance, the play reflects upon the ancient Christocentric beliefs in forgiveness and redemption, and their place in Jacobean England. As we are aware, the play revolves around Prospero’s revenge against Antonio and Caliban. Antonio has originally taken over Prospero’s dukedom duties when Prospero was preoccupied with his studies: “The government I cast upon my brother, And to my state grew stranger, being transported and rapt in secret studies. Thy false uncle”. The metaphor of his estrangement from his governance, coupled with the distaste captured in the description of the ‘false’ uncle, reveals to us Prospero’s driving force throughout the entire play: his guilt and desire for revenge. In an odd twist of events, however, for a prominently didactic and moralistic Christian audience, Prospero succeeds in his goal of revenge. But we begin to see the cracks in Prospero’s desires, when he reaches an epiphany stating: “the rarer action In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further.” The personification paints an image that reveals Prospero’s change in heart, ultimately affirming the values of Christian Jacobean England by mirroring the Christian commandment, ‘love thine enemies. Prospero realizes his mistake, stating his revenge shall continue no longer, as seen in his last words: “Mercy itself and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardoned be, Let your indulgence set me free.” This rhyming couplet, which had come to be expected in the final lines of Shakespeare’s plays, furthers Shakespeare’s main point: that the only escape one can find from revenge is forgiveness and mercy. The lyricism of his language carries his point through time, reflecting a world that once was, upon a modern world’s examination of the human condition.

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Atwood furthers this study of what it means to be human, begging us to question: who really deserves redemption? In Hag-seed Atwood explores the values of forgiveness and redemption through Felix. Note that Felix’s name, just like Prospero’s, translates from Latin to connote notions of luck, happiness, and general good health. This metaleptic transposition of identity connects Prospero and Felix in their pursuits - particularly their desires for revenge. This drive for revenge is represented through Miranda - who Atwood purposefully decided to keep as Felix’s daughter’s name, possibly in order to drive home the connection between Felix and Prospero. Both fathers do not want to let her go, Felix especially so after his dismissal from the theatre festival’s organization. When his plan for a gorgeous staging of The Tempest – a creation through which ‘his Miranda would live again’ fell to pieces, Atwood establishes a paranormal dialogue which, though heartening, risks shutting him off from the world. Felix trying to reassure himself of his sanity emulates Prospero’s own struggles: “Fool, he tells himself. She’s not here. She was never here.” Unable to be free of Miranda, he continues with the play eventually reaching the end of his scheme for revenge, once again embodying Prospero by reading his final lines. In doing so he comes to a similar realization as his 400-year-old counterpart, realizing that his revenge has only been fuelling his pain and suffering. This results in him releasing Miranda at the end of the play, finally being free from the prison built by his guilt and vengeance.

What is freedom? A unique meaning exists within each individual but the commonality between all humans is our continual attempts to our achieving own liberation. The Tempest explores freedom as ironically the catalyst to an individual’s imprisonment, depicting a never-ending cycle between the two opposing concepts. This cycle is represented in the play through Prospero and his captives: Ariel and Caliban. Ariel, originally being held captive to Sycorax, was freed by Prospero, only to be ironically imprisoned by him as payment for his freedom. In Ariel’s gratitude “I thank thee, master”, the irony of her thanking her master for her freedom begs us to consider what it means to truly be free when freedom can be used as its own ironic form of imprisonment. This paradoxical struggle between freedom and imprisonment continues to be explored through Caliban, the deformed son of Sycorax and now a slave of Prospero. After escaping Prospero, Caliban ironically accepts servitude again in hopes of gaining the freedom he already had, “Ay, with a heart as willing As bondage e'er of freedom. Here’s my hand.” The metaphor ‘bondage e’er of freedom’ ironically encaptures the duality of the two opposing concepts, reinforcing the notion that an individual's freedom can lead to their imprisonment. Shakespeare furthers this cyclic nature of freedom and imprisonment through the meta-textual reference to Prospero as the Director of the play: “But release me from my bands With the help of your good hands.” In this direct address to the audience, Shakespeare, using Prospero as a mouthpiece, begs for his freedom as a playwright through the satisfaction of the audience. The rhyming couplet of “bands” and “hands” furthers this point, as Prospero is not only asking for literal freedom from bondage but also Shakespeare asking us for his freedom through our applause - the fact that this is his last play makes this message even more powerful to us today. In doing so, these discussions of what it means to free reverberate throughout time, colliding the past with the present through its meta-commentary on the relationship between composers and ourselves - the audience!

Hag-seed reimagines this question of what it means to be free, by exploring the same cyclical nature of freedom and imprisonment but by providing new meaning in order for us to better access this 400-year-old play. Atwood puts a twist on Shakespeare’s idea of revenge acting as a prison, instead of considering grief as a mechanism for one's imprisonment, she explores this through Felix, the mirror of Prospero, and director of the prison’s rendition of The Tempest. Felix in the novel is driven by his grief, his actions, and his anger all motivated by the loss of his daughter Miranda. When initially daydreaming about his daughter: “If she’d lived, she would have been at the awkward teenager stage: making dismissive comments, rolling her eyes at him, dying her hair, tattooing her arms… She’s such a comfort.” Through a relaxed and simplistic style of writing, along with listing the typical experiences of a modern teenage girl, Atwood is able to show us the comfort even the idea of her life provides to Felix. But this idea grows, from being a comforting thought to an uncontrollable force, one which imprisons his mind, driving him through a relentless pursuit of vengeance. Like Prospero, he attempts to delude himself by describing the production as a way for him to honor his daughter: “Miranda would become the daughter who had not been lost; who’d been a protecting cherub, cheering her exiled father.” This postmodern use of pastiche delights us - a postmodern audience - however, we know what truly drives his desire to complete the production: vengeance. This struggle Felix experiences throughout the novel reflects Prospero’s own journey and is used to reinforce and reimagine the notion that ultimately the cycle of freedom and imprisonment can only be broken within our own minds.

Humans are irrational, freedom is relative and values change; the comparison of texts provides a gateway into examining these concepts, highlighting the resonances between the past and present and giving new meaning to old perspectives. Christocentric ideals from the Tempest are being reshaped and reformed and given a reinvigorated purpose through Hag-seed. When reflecting on these texts, we can see the authors, their perspectives, and ultimately their message and questions, allowing us to see the meaning in our individual lives. I can’t say what meaning these texts provide to each individual who reads them, but the link that ties us is what we can gain, our perspectives widening and views evolving through the mirror that is shown to us, revealing the ‘very age and body of our time.