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How does Shakespeare and Shelley explore power and control through language, structure?
This essay contains the involvement of power and control through language used by the characters in the two novels, Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and The Tempest (William Shakespeare). The word power is a noun used to express the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way. Control is a word used to state the power to influence or direct people’s behaviour or the course of events. Both of the stories deal with these two words, however they both were written in completely different eras.
Frankenstein was written and published in 1818 by Mary Shelley. The Novel is about a young scientist called Victor Frankenstein who plans to create life, as if to mimic God. His experiments are positive and he uses body parts to re-create a human and give it life, this experiment takes places in chapter 5. Frankenstein is unable to give the creature its needs and ends up coming to an unsettled mind. The creature then turns on Frankenstein because of this and ends up killing Frankenstein’s loved ones. Shelley explores power and control through these two characters. Throughout the beginning of the Novel where the making of the creature takes place, Shelley gives a high status to Frankenstein as he wishes to take on God’s role and give life. As God is seen by many people on the earth as the creator and ruler of the universe and a supreme being with power over nature or human being, this could show how much power and control Frankenstein was willing to gain through the story.
Once Frankenstein’s creature came to life, his power and control had improved, giving him a higher status. The longer the creature lived the faster Frankenstein’s power/control decreased. Frankenstein created the monster using different body parts from dead bodies, and a spark of lightning to give it life.
Mary Shelley was influence on the creation of the monster from the Aldini experiment of stimulating muscles with electric currents. Giovanni Aldini was an Italian psychologist and scientist who lived in the 1800’s. He was famous for his experiment on the corpse of George Forster in January 1803. At this time Shelley was only 5, so she was unaware that it took place. It was until she was older when her friends and family told her about the experiment. This influenced her too write the story of Frankenstein and how he came to life.
An example of Power and Control in the novel, Frankenstein, is the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and his creation. In Chapter 5, when Frankenstein’s creation comes to life, and approaches him, he runs away from his creation with fear. Leaving the Creation confused. Throughout the story Frankenstein is running away with the creation not too far behind. As the story goes on, the creation gains more power over Frankenstein. Frankenstein goes through a lot of trouble trying to get away from his creation, and he goes through tragic events in his life caused by his creation. For example the death of his younger brother and constant nervous break downs. All of
these negative impacts makes Victor Frankenstein’s power and control over his creation decrease with the creations increasing. This is the reason why he is able to murder Frankenstein’s loved ones, as he hopes Frankenstein will give up running away so the creation can get what he wants; a wife.
The Tempest was a play, written by William Shakespeare and is about a Duke of Milan called Prospero who is deported from his own kingdom by his younger brother, who takes over his throne. He then seeks revenge on his younger brother, as the play goes on other characters are introduced and they each have different roles to do with the re-vengeance. These characters each have a link to power and control.
In the 17th century year 1609 white Europeans sailed towards America, with 500 colonists on board and a major shipwreck took place changing the course of their sailing. The change of direction took them to one of the Islands in the Bermuda’s. This Island was known as the Devil’s Island. This was mentioned by Ariel in the script, when telling Prospero what she has done to the ship. There was such thing as the old world and the new world in the 17th century. The old world was seen as a civilization that had gone through the industrial revolution, which had a lot of discoveries, with countries in Europe that were claimed to be civilized. The new world was a metaphor given to the America, in terms of the new world they had not gone through a stage of development such as the industrial revolution. This was due to the fact that America were full of natives, were they were seen as uncivilized by the Europeans. This takes it into conclusion that the old world desired to colonize the old world as they had a lot of riches, but also to enable them to go through the stage of development. Shakespeare used the old world and the new world and presented them with Prospero and Caliban. Shakespeare presented the old world through Prospero as he was a white European from Milan, Italy in Europe. Caliban was a seen as the new world as he was a uncivilized native unlike Prospero.
As the story is introduced, it begins with Prospero and his daughter, Miranda. Another point that demonstrates the power and control in The Tempest is, Act 1 Scene 1 when we are introduced to the play-script. A ‘violent’ storm takes place, with a ship that is out of control. The storm is controlled by Prospero which affects the ship. He does this aiming to scare the crew on the ship, to show off his powers so they feel insecure and threatened when entering the island. He threatens them with the storm to send a warning to the crew on the ship that they can’t take over his island.
One of the characters that are mainly involved with power and control is Caliban. In the story he has a ranking at bottom of the hierarchy. As Prospero’s slave, Caliban is seen as derogatory, as his attitude towards Prospero is full of hate, an example of this is from Act scene 2 “Shake it off. Come on; we’ll visit Caliban, my slave, who never Yields us kind answers.” This quotation was mention by Prospero, directed to Miranda. He is saying that Caliban replies to him yelling with rude responses. Even though Caliban is Prospero’s slave, we can see that Caliban does not have a civilized manner towards is owners, however he still obeys Propspero. The reason to this maybe because he is scared of Prospero because of his power. Prospero is the owner of the island that Caliban lives on, which gives him a high statues in the hierarchy.
Ariel is more willing to obey Prospero because of the leverage he has over him. Prospero released Ariel from an enchanted tree where he was being kept prisoner by the witch who previously ruled the island, Caliban’s mother. Because of this, Ariel effectively owes him a great debt which Prospero uses as an advantage make him follow his orders. Prospero also teases Ariel with a promise of releasing him eventually if he obeys everything he commands. This makes him more likely to try and please Prospero. On the other hand, Prospero tells him that he will lock him back in the tree if he disobeys, something which Ariel is very afraid of. So to Ariel, his only hope of freedom is to keep Prospero happy. This means that the relationship between Prospero and Ariel is completely one sided in Prospero’s favour.
Prospero treats Ariel in a civilized manner, rather than Caliban. This is because, Prospero freed Ariel from Sycorax, Calibans mother. So Ariel obeys Prospero to repay him, whereas Prospero did not do any favours for Caliban, instead he killed his mother and enslaved him.
As the play comes to an end, the main character that changes his attitude towards others and himself is involved Caliban. At the end of the story, Caliban reflects on his behaviour. Throughout the play Caliban’s plan was too murder Prospero, making him free from slavery. As he was unable to do this alone because of Prospero’s power and control he tried to gain help from Stephano and Trinculo, persuading them by telling them that they would own the whole island if they managed to murder Prospero. Prospero finds out about Caliban’s plan through Ariel and out fronts him. This is when Caliban feels sympathetic and embarrassed by himself and pleads Prospero for forgiveness because he realizes that Prospero’s power and control is a high status. Prospero forgives him and Caliban continues to be his slave, however he Prospero also has a better attitude towards Caliban as he realizes that Caliban is more civilized then he thought.
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