Caliban Inside And Out Essay Research Paper

Caliban Inside And Out Essay, Research Paper

Caliban Inside and Out

Question: Compare or contrast the ways in which roberto Fernandez Retamar and George Lamming

construct national identity through the figure of Caliban. Use Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”

if you need to to discuss Caliban.

In order to discuss the ways in which Retamar and Lamming have

constructed a national identity through Caliban it is essential to discuss the

cultural background of these writers. Retamar and Lamming are about as

dissimilar as night and day, and this is evident in both the lives that they

have led, as well as the essays that they have constructed. Their

differences have come from their experiences, and how they have

attempted to establish an identity for themselves and their people. It would

be easy to label them the .pessimist Retamar,. and the .optimist Lamming,.

or the Communist Retamar, and the Imperialist Lamming, yet this would

oversimplify a definition that is in no way simple. Rather, I shall use the

terms internal and external. For both of these men have traveled abroad in

their studies, and in their solidifying of the concept of Caliban, each has

chosen a separate point of view to attempt to identify the same ideal. For

Retamar his focus, as well as his point of view is wholly internal, while for

Lamming he looks on from the outside, the external, and writes of what

comes from Caliban, and how the world sees it.

I shall begin with Retamar. Here is a man who had tried early in his

life to give a face to Caliban. Retamar, a Marxist writer, described

Caliban by first pointing out that his very name is Shakespeare.s anagram

for cannibal. He is meant to be an Anthropophagus, a bestial eater of his

own kind. This was quite clearly an illustrious exaggeration on the part of

Shakespeare, and yet in Shakespeare.s time there were certainly islands

whose inhabitants would not hesitate to eat human flesh. But rather than

dwell on the cannibalistic or monstrous aspects of Caliban, as that would

surely not lend a helping hand toward the creation of a national identity,

Retamar focuses, from the beginning, on the one single aspect of Caliban

that has a meaning for him — rebellion. .Our symbol is not Ariel, as Rodo

thought, .he says, .but rather Caliban. . . what is our history, what is our

culture, if not the history and culture of Caliban. (Retamar-14).

Retamar, as did Lamming, traveled in his youth, and taught school in

the United States. He had a chance to be away from his .third world.

roots, and yet at the first sign of rebellion in Cuba, at the first opportunity

to be a part of the ongoing process of change, he left the U.S. He had to

go back to the islands, to be a part of the internal struggle. He tells of

having written articles supporting the downfall of Batista, and as soon as

he finds out that Batista has been ousted, and that Fidel Castro is the new

ruler of Cuba he leaves the U.S. He leaves a prestigious teaching job at

Columbia University in order to go back to Cuba where he teaches for more

than 30 years. Why did he leave. Because to Retamar, being a

descendant of Caliban means being a revolutionary. It means being

someone who wants change, and who pushes for change. Yet change, for

him, can only come from within. He wants desperately to be a part of the

creation of a culture that is unique. Not Latin-American, or

Ibero-American, etc, but something that is new.

Retamar even expresses a feeling akin to guilt at the proposal of the

use of Caliban as the symbol of his people, .In proposing Caliban as our

symbol, I am aware that it is not entirely ours, that it is also an alien

elaboration, although in this case based on our concrete realities. But how

can this alien quality be entirely avoided.. (Retamar-16). Of course

Retamar does manage to escape this guilt when he credits Lamming and

Brathwaite with being the first writers to concretely connect the character,

Caliban, to their respective countries which today make up the modern day

Caribbean.

Retamar lived long in the islands, and drank heavily from the chalice

of Marxist rhetoric, this is evident in such passages of his as, .Our culture

is — and can only be — the child of revolution, of our multisecular rejection of

all colonialisms.. (Retamar-38). It is also interesting to compare the

similarities between Retamar and Shakespeare.s Caliban. While away from

Prospero and gathering wood Caliban comes upon Stephano and Trinculo.

He immediately begins to offer his obeisance to these two new men, whom

he has never met before. He does this because, for him, this union must

not only be better than his relationship with Prospero, but through this new

allegiance he can have Prospero killed, and thus his immediate problem

solved. The similarity that I see here is that Retamar was willing to spea

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