Compare And Contrast The Ways In Which Prospero Talks To Miranda, Ariel And Caliban

The Tempest is about Prospero who is trapped on an island with his daughter Miranda. Prospero used to be the Duke of Milan; he is a magician and controls the spirit Ariel. Ariel was once enslaved to Sycorax how died but her son Caliban is alive. Caliban is part human part beast and he is Prospero’s slave. Prospero has different relationships with each of the characters, so he talks to them differently.

Miranda and Prospero enter for the first time in the second scene. Miranda is asking Prospero whether he started the storm and if anyone had been injured. When Prospero talks to Miranda it is very loving, by calling her dear, �of thee my dear one’. This is him telling Miranda how much he cares for her. However sometimes when Prospero is talking to Miranda he is quite stern, because he is her father as well so he has to be strict at times. �Obey and be attentive’, here he is being very authoritive. Other times he is being quite angry to Miranda is when he is trying to tell her about her past,’ dost thou attend me’ and thou attend’st not’. Here he is asking Miranda if she is listening, she answers yes to both of these. This makes Prospero sound very vain because he wants all of Miranda’s attention and he keeps demanding if she is listening. When he says,’ dost thou hear’ and Miranda answers,’ your tale, sir, would cure deafness’. Prospero sounds paranoid for her attention so that Miranda has to be very complimentary to him in order for him to believe her and continue. Before he is talking to Miranda about his past he uses a lot of names like,’ daughter’ and �dear’. However during his speech about their history he starts to get a lot angrier with her. Before he starts his story he says to Miranda,’ sit down’, he is starting up, this gives him power because he is standing up looking down on her so he looks like a very superior figure. Then when he starts to reassure her about their family he sits down, which shows that they are even and on the same level. He says,’ o, a cherubin,’ which means young angel, which is very parent-child comforting thing to say. It seems that when he is talking to Miranda he is loving but when he is talking about something that angers him he partly takes it out on her. This is also shown in, �well demanded wench’. When Prospero says this it is not nice because wench is not a nice name and by saying some one demanded something you are making them appear very rude. He dominates conversations, only letting Miranda ask some questions.

Ariel is Prospero’s spirit that he asked to serve him for a year. Ariel talks a lot by describing using elements such as wind, fire, earth and water. At first when Prospero talks to Ariel he does not use his actual name instead he merely calls him, �my spirit’. This is a quite possessive use of �my’, which emphasis’s that Ariel is Prospero’s slave but makes him sound like a belonging. However Prospero does change the way he talks to Ariel after he finds out how well he has done the job that he had asked Ariel to do. This is almost as if he waiting to see whether or not he should be angry with Ariel, after that he starts to call him,’ but are they Ariel safe?’ Sometimes when Prospero talks to Ariel he seems quite patronising,’ my brave spirit,’ and �that’s my spirit’. This is very condescending towards Ariel who is in fact more powerful than Prospero, who is talking to him as though he is his pet. When Ariel asks when he can be freed Prospero gets very angry, he calls Ariel,’ moody’, which is quite a common use of language for a great magician. When he is angry with Ariel the words he uses have quite harsh sounds to them,’ to do me business in the veins o’th’earth’. The �v’ in veins makes hard sound, this relates to the mood that Prospero is in. When he is angry he appears to be quite insistent,’ speak. Tell me’. This is very authoritive use of language, which contrasts with when he was asking a question before the argument,’ hast thou, spirit, performed to point the tempest that I bade thee?’ When Prospero says this he is being relatively polite to Ariel, whereas in the quote after that he is being arrogant as though Ariel needs his permission to speak. Then Prospero