Ecocritical Analysis of The Tempest

 Ecocriticism emerges in the field of literary criticism in the face of the environmental degradation and ecological crisis. Ecocriticism is the study of the relationship between literature and the physical environment, it takes an earth centered approach to literary studies .Despite the broad scope of inquiry and disparate levels of sophistication, all ecological criticism shares one fundamental premise the human culture is connected to the physical world, affecting it and affected by it. Ecocriticism takes as its subject the interconnection between nature and culture, specifically the cultural artifacts of language and literature. Shakespeare’s The Tempest has to offer, as it also speaks the issue of morality, primogeniture and even carrier some interesting Eco-critical reading. The play explores the relationship between man and nature further probes the destruction of the original social when the ecological balance is broken.

The Tempest begins with a storm: we find ourselves immediately in the middle of a chaotic situation, where sailors are desperately trying to prevent the ship from colliding with an island. The atmosphere is gloomy, death is in the air, and we feel uneasy and anxious about what is going to happen. What we perceive at first is an inevitable faith looming over helpless human beings, small and powerless under the merciless fury of an ungovernable sea.

It is interesting to notice that, in this context, land is dangerous: sailors try to steer away from a shoreline and the boatswain claims that a landless sea would be safer. However, Gonzalo expresses longing for the land with the lines “Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground – long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills above be done, but I would fain die a dry death” (1.1.6568). More than simply suggesting two different points of view, this contraposition between dangerous land and land as a safe idyllic place can remind us of the dichotomy which characterizes the discourse of the island and, more generally, the human attitude towards the natural world.

Thus, Shakespeare wrote The Tempest in a context where ecological crisis was a serious matter and individuals were affected by environmental changes. Above all, individuals were starting to control nature in an unprecedented way. The first scene portrays a fearsome natural disaster which nearly kills a number of travellers. However, the point is that the tempest is the result of Prospero's manipulation. Which means that the real responsible for such a horrible and dangerous situation is a human being, not the weather. The nature of Prospero's magic is quite mysterious: we know that the core of his power lies in his books, and that the island is populated by spirits who obey him through the mediation of Ariel. Furthermore, thanks to Caliban, Prospero has acquired knowledge about the island vegetation. Thus, both Ariel and Caliban represent the connection between Prospero and the island. Although Prospero does not interact with the island directly and he does not seem interested in its flora and fauna, throughout the play, he uses a number of figures of speech which refer to the environment. he pictures three images connected to the natural world. First, with the line “To what tune pleased his ear, that now he was the ivy which had hid my princely trunk and sucked my verdure out on't” (1.2.85-87), he compares himself to a tree, creating the tree metaphor to describe the betrayal of his brother, who is compared to an ivy that sucks the energy of the tree. Then, he uses the personification to picture their journey through the sea: “There they hoist us to cry to th'sea that roared to us, to sigh to th'winds, whose pity,  sighing back again, did us but loving wrong” (1.2.148-151). This line represents the winds as ambivalent because they did wrong in blowing the ship to sea, but were also full of pity. Like the boatswain, Prospero humanizes the wind, attributing to it both the fault for their unfortunate situation and the sentiment of pity. Finally the line “hear the last of our sea-sorrow” (1.2.170) marks the beginning of a series of sea compounds in the text, among which “sea-storm” (1.2.177), “sea-sorrow”, and “sea change” (1.2.401) are the most relevant. According to Mentz, the sea writes all human plots and stories, and the three compounds evoke three different situations: respectively chaos and fear, loneliness and desperation, possibility and hope (2009:9). Again, these situations and the consequential feelings are manifestations of what is definitely human. To Prospero, the natural world exists only in relation to himself.

In the context of colonialism, anthropocentrism means that the white European male considers both the landscape and its inhabitants as elements which he has the right to exploit. The colonizer takes his superiority for granted, his actions are based on the assumption that everything he encounters in the New World is there at his disposal. Either he is only interested in establishing his power, and other civilizations are not even worthy of being considered human; or, to some extent, he wants to build a relationship, though not a fair one: from his superior position, the colonizer becomes the master who educates his slave. However, Prospero refers to him as a “subject” and Caliban himself seems to think that “the man is made by the nature and behaviour of the master”.

From an ecocritical perspective, we can associate the character of Prospero to the scientist or, more in general, to the Western individual who, in the name of progress, exploits nature for his aims; thus, Ariel and Caliban represent the environmental response. One the one hand, we perceive the natural world as passive: we postpone the necessity of dealing with the ecological crisis and we continue to exploit our environment. On the other hand, the truth is that the natural world is not passive at all: the danger of climate change is real and its consequences have been occurring for decades. Consequently, if we associate Prospero's island to Gaia hypothesis, we may argue that both Ariel and Caliban are involved in the environmental living process: Ariel has the power to direct natural elements, while Caliban's connection with nature lies in his ecological knowledge. These characters represent both an intermediary between Prospero and the environment, and the result of human intervention in the non-human.

 The union between Ferdinand and Miranda is compared to a natural growing process that has to be preserved and nurtured in a pure and chaste way, otherwise bad weeds will destroy it. There is a parallel between women and nature: Prospero literally gives Miranda to Ferdinand as a gift, a seed that will produce a flower, but only if Ferdinand keeps it intact until the wedding ceremony. Thus, to some extent, the seed purity is protected and respected; however, it  is something that will provide a benefit for both Ferdinand and Prospero. As soon as the ceremony will have granted the holiness of the union, Ferdinand will make a flower out of the seed, so that the dukedom of Milan and the kingdom of Naples will be caught under the same power, for the benefit of the two male rulers. As this metaphor suggests, Prospero is interested in nature only as far as his anthropocentric needs are concerned. However, it sounds improbable that a man of his “art” and power could not manage to create a means that allowed him to leave the island. More likely, the act of deforestation is simply a way to control and govern the place where he has established his mastery.