The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [233]
The first image in the play, giving it the immediate feel of a Voyage and Return story, is of the group of characters from the sick `upper world', the usurping Duke Antonio, his equally dark friend King Alonso and their followers, tumbling suddenly and violently into the `inferior realm' as their ship is wrecked on Prospero's island. Here wait the denizens of the lower world to put them through the ordeals which will transform them: above all Prospero himself, who was exiled by Antonio from his proper state as the true Duke of Milan. Now, after years of study and inward growth, Prospero has been almost completely transformed into a Wise Old Man; and with him we see his gentle daughter Miranda, a perfect, loving symbol of the anima. But even in Prospero's shadow-kingdom all is not yet fully redeemed and brought to the light, as we see from the shambling, shadowy presence of Caliban, son of the Dark Mother and Witch Sycorax. Prospero himself still has to make the last moves which will bring him back to his full state of kingship in the upper world. He still, in contrast to the innocent, compassionate Miranda, has some anger against those who have wronged him. Equally, among the upper world figures who have now fallen into Prospero's power, not all are wholly dark: they include two light figures, the Son-Hero Ferdinand, and the faithful old courtier Gonzalo, who had been responsible for saving Prospero and Miranda from death all those years before, and who himself observes the drama through sage eyes as a second Wise Old Man.
The first move in the great process of transformation which is now set in motion is the bringing together of the two representatives of the rising generation, Ferdinand and Miranda, a Prince and a Princess. In the instant burgeoning of pure, innocent love between them we see the first promise of hope and new life for the future. But before that can be realised, the whole complex of disordered relationships involving the older generation must be unknotted and brought into their proper life-giving state. The real problem which has to be sorted out is the chief source of the sickness and disorder, centred in the two dark kings, Antonio and Alonso. These, by the double-negative, are the `dark Opposites' to the hero Prospero himself, symbolising all that holds him back from his own state of wholeness. And the key figure in the drama now becomes his servant Ariel.
Described by Prospero as `my tricksy spirit, Ariel is the elusive, mischievous Trickster, whose archetypal role in stories is to stir up and bewilder people who are set in one mode of consciousness into another. Dancing round like a will-o'-thewisp, using his magical powers, he convinces them that they are no longer sure of anything. He teases them out of their existing state of mind: firstly, into what seems like a state of madness, where nothing is any longer certain; but eventually into seeing the world straight and whole again.
Such is Ariel's role in The Tempest. First, by a bewildering display of tricks, visions and mysterious music, he drives the dark figures into a state of desperation. Then he confronts them with the reality of their terrible crime, the usurpation of Prospero, with the hint that such a crime must lead to death. `You among men being most unfit to live' he tells them, `I have made you mad; and even with such-like valour, men hang and drown their proper selves'. In other words, the heart of their crime is that they have not been true to their proper selves; they have violated the Self. Finally, as the horror of what they have done begins to sink in on them, Prospero confronts them and this shock - for they thought he was dead - is enough for them to beg for mercy and forgiveness. At the point where Prospero does forgive them, he at last reaches wholeness, as he emerges in his true upper world identity to reassume sovereignty over his rightful kingdom. Gonzalo rubs in the message that the whole effect of the adventure had been to bring everyone back to their proper selves, after a time when `no