Alexander Diaz

Autobibliography Paper

ERH-205WX-02

Word Count: 2508

Help Received: See works cited

A New Divide

Throughout the many ages that pass humanity, one thing is for certain, history repeats itself. One can see this through the many wars, literature pieces, and fashion statements that continuously arise between the centuries. But there is one instance where this emergence is more defined. This specific instance can be found in Shakespeare’s The Tempest where a certain character named Caliban, a weird half fish half man creature, compares to Bram Stoker’s character Renfield, a psychopath under the control of an evil vampire. These two characters share one common role in both of these very different stories. They both share this role as an underling, a slave bound to the bidding of their master. Now, these books share not only different stories but also different time periods by about three hundred years. Shakespeare being born in 1564 and Stoker being born in 1847. So the question comes into play, why did two different authors, born in two different time periods, writing two different novels, create such similar characters? The answer to this question is simple: during both of their time periods the image of people of color were still thought of as not equal or of lesser status to white people. These characters represented the slaves or new world natives of Shakespeare’s time and the people of color or foreigners during Stoker’s time who had just come out of slavery. They showed the racist feelings that lingered during the 1500’s when slaves were still slaves and during the 1800’s when they were just recently released from their slave status but still treated as lesser people. Through these two characters one can see the cynical racism that infested the minds of these two authors and the deep rooted racism that lingered in England.

Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a story about people getting stranded on an island by a powerful wizard, named Prospero, who was once a duke before his brother forced him into exile for his position. At the beginning of the story the first encounter with Prospero introduces the reader to his two servants on the island. One is named Ariel, a spirit who is more than happy to serve Prospero as long as he keeps his word to free him at the end of his tasks, and one named Caliban, a vicious and deformed slave who sees his servitude as something unwilling and forced upon him. It is interesting to see Caliban displayed in this way because he is the person who was cheated out of his own home and forced to serve Prospero just for being born from his mother, who apparently was an evil witch named Sycorax. Fast forward to Stoker’s time period when Dracula was released and there lies a character similar to Caliban. This character is named Renfield. Renfield is a patient at a mental hospital who calls Dracula his master. Renfield is described as this dumb, brutish being that seems to have no clear or rational thoughts. Renfield is just used as a pawn for Dracula’s needs. One can even go so far as to say that he is a slave to Dracula’s spell. Now why would these two characters, ones who are both deformed in some way with brutish strength and a dependence on other people, possibly be written so similar to each other? It is because both ages have this lasting impression that people of color are these lesser beings and they exemplify this in their book by making these characters represent what they hate.

Caliban being born of this evil witch that birthed him, only to be abandoned and raised as this savage on the island. His morbid description as this half man half fish tells more to the reader than Shakespeare describes. Caliban is pictured to the reader as half a man because he was made out of an image of a slave. During Shakespeare’s time it was common belief that black people were only half a man if a man at all. It is known that during Shakespeare’s time England was just starting to land on and colonize America. This would make them come into contact with the native people there who they would of course find inferior to themselves. In Alden T. Vaughans Shakespeare’s Indian: The Americanization of Caliban, Vaughan talks about numerous tribes of people that Caliban can represent. He talks about how Caliban can be a symbol of African tribes that have already been enslaved or these new “Indians” explorers found in the new world. He compares Caliban to them saying they both are brutish beings needing the assistance of a superior power to help them progress and develop. Vaughan even goes so far as saying the first sentence into his article that the colonization of America is what inspired Shakespeare’s story of The Tempest and how it especially gave “characterization of the savage and deformed slave Caliban”(137). He also says that other critics carry the colonization of America even farther comparing Prospero with the “domineering colonial planters” and Caliban being a symbol for “Indians who lost their land and often their liberty to European intruders”(137). Here one can see evidence for what Shakespeare might have been thinking when he wrote the character Caliban. It is so secret that this character was made to represent a group of people he thought were lesser to him. These people just happened to be the new natives of America that the English are experiencing for the first time. Instinctively they are racist and treat these new people as savages and uncultured beasts of this new world. Shakespeare reflects this in his writing and makes Caliban, the symbol for new American natives, one who is half man and have beast, one who is stupid and brutish, one who is portrayed as evil cunning, and a rapist. There is no doubt that Shakespeare’s creation of Caliban was intentional and that he found his inspiration amongst these suppressed and abused natives of the land. In Caliban is where lies these deep rooted racist thoughts that inhabited Shakespeare’s text The Tempest. But the question is did Shakespeare get his ideas of these new world people from the society around him or did it come from his own first hand experience with the people? The answer is he experienced these imaginations a little bit from both sides of the spectrum. Obviously the rumors and speculations of these people came back to England from tall tales of sailors and their fight against these new savages on distant lands. But one can also see from Sidney Lee’s work on page 140 that Shakespeare did indeed get some first hand experience with these new natives that went far beyond sailors travel accounts. Shakespeare actually had the opportunity to observe these Indians when they were put up for display in England. Lee says this allowed Shakespeare to observe “at first hand aboriginal temperament” (140). Lee states that this resulted with Shakespeare having “ a full-length portrait of the aboriginal inhabitant of the New World who was fully human but lacking moral sense, moral control, and ratiocination”(140). One can assume that this first hand experience drove the creation of the character Caliban. Without Shakespeare fully experiencing these New World natives close and personal, he would have never been able to imagine what a savage born onto an island secluded from the world would have acted like. There would be no Caliban who appeared brutish, or monstrous to the newcomers on the island. This monstrous figure that Shakespeare describes Caliban as also raises another point about how society saw these brutish beings. It is said in Lee Mitchell’s journal, Two Notes on “The Tempest”, on page 230 that the word monster is said in some form or way thirty three times to describe Caliban. The interesting part about this is that Caliban, according to Mitchell, is only called a monster by Trinculo and Stephano within the story. This has an interesting twist to the development and creation of these characters because it tells the reader that there is more going on in this story than just what is being told. Trinculo and Stephano represent the common masses of England and in seeing Caliban, who represents the New World natives, they immediately refer to him as this monster and call him such many more times. They even accept his request to make Stephano his god and do his bidding. This not only exemplifies the general masses racism towards these new natives but also shows how they thought of themselves as above these natives so much to even be considered a god amongst them. Whether this was Shakespeare’s true intention, one may never know, but it gives a clear indication that there were hints of racism in Shakespeare’s play that reflected the views of England during that time.

The other half that needs to be elaborated on is the point of Bram Stoker putting in Renfield as a main character in the story. Throughout the story of Dracula the reader can see many different points of view from each character. It seems like everyone who is involved with Dracula himself has a journal or a short excerpt about their daily life or the vampire himself. But what about this mysterious character Renfield that seems to just come up in a personal journal but stay as the main focus of John Seward. When the reader was first introduced to Seward he was a man trying to court the beautiful Ms. Lucy. But after her denial of him he takes a twisted turn and suddenly becomes obsessed with one of his patients, Renfield. Renfield  has no background in this story, all the reader knows is that he is a psychopath who takes interest in eating flies. It is a mystery as to why Renfield’s story is told through Dr. Seward instead of the man himself. But there is one thing that is for certain and that is the pure obedience Renfield has towards Dracula. Now it is not clear why Renfield was picked to be Dracula’s servant. It is not even clear how the two communicated before Dracula even arrived. All the reader knows is that this man, this prophet of Dracula’s arrival, seems to be completely devoted to Dracula, at least at first. But at the beginning stages of  Renfield could be described as a slave to Dracula’s command. He did his bidding without question and praised Dracula as a God. This raises the question as to why Stoker would make a character like this and tell it from Seward’s standpoint instead of his own? Chapter two of David Floyd’s book gives an interesting take on Renfields character. Floyd states that Renfield was portrayed the way he is to give an insight on the problems of the deteriorating family image that had been occurring in England during Stokers time. He says that Renfield was written to be an orphan lost and driven mad by the exile by his parents. Floyd states that this exile makes him lose his identity and who he really is causing him to flock to Dracula as a way to be accepted and loved by someone. Although this is interesting it leaves too many holes such as the reader not actually knowing how Renfield gets to the asylum or why he is so sensitive to Dracula’s appearance. And if he wanted to be accepted by Dracula so much then why did he go against him at the end? Many would agree that Renfield wanted to be accepted but more so in the way of a slave wanting to please his master than an orphan wanting to have a dad. One would agree that Stoker wrote Renfield in this way to show the contrast between a good slave and a bad slave. The good slave being the initial Renfield where he does his master’s bidding and is promised immortality and believes it. The bad slave being the Renfield who opposes Dracula and ultimately gets his neck snapped at the end. One can only speculate whether society during that time influenced the character of Renfield or if Stoker himself was a racist.

Comparing the two novels is something that can be easily accomplished. Even though these two novels tell a different story, they both utilize similar characters, or at least similar character roles. For example in The Tempest Caliban is the slave of Prospero, the master who has significant powers. Caliban acts as the bad slave who constantly ignores the commands of Prospero while Ariel, another servant of Prospero, acts as the good slave who does his bidding in turn for his freedom. In Dracula the same occurrence happens. Renfield is the slave to Dracula, his master who holds great power, but instead of having one be the bad slave and one be the good slave, Renfield acts as both. In the beginning he is the good slave ready to do the master’s bidding in turn for a great reward of immortality, or freedom from death, while at the end he is the bad slave who eventually dies for disobeying his master. The two stories both talk about both Caliban and Renfield being a slave to someone while the articles back it up. But what they do not explain is the difference the Europeans thought between a bad slave and a good slave. In both stories the good slave is promised a reward while the bad slave is punished in some way. This thought of superiority over the characters of the novel branched out from the underlying thought that white Europeans were superior to those foreigners or those of color and that this in turn granted them the right to give or take away as needed.

In conclusion, one can agree that there can be many ways to analyze a book. There are numerous lenses or terministic screens one can use to read through a story and pick up on different occurrences. In this analyses, the lens that was most prominent was that of racism throughout each story. The reader saw the racist acts towards Caliban and Renfield merely by the portrayal of each character. These characters were created for more than what was explained it each story. They had a deeper meaning and purpose that many could not see until actually looking at it through the proper lense. But when this lense reveals the hidden truths, it is almost impossible not to be aware of it in comparison to other stories. There are many ways in which both The Tempest and Dracula  compare to one another. Even being three hundred years apart, there are many similarities between the two stories and their characters. The most prominent one being this overcast idea of racism and superiority in both books. History does in fact repeat itself and the ideals of Shakespeare’s time lingered on throughout the century into Stoker’s age. People fade away, words change, but the ideas produced are immortalized in time.