Magic & Nature

Magic & Nature

1. "A tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning"

   • Tempest disturbs natural order, a catalyst for change, metaphor for social/political turmoil

2. "Had I been any god of power, I would have sunk the sea within the earth or ere it should the good ship so have swallow'd and the fraughting souls within her" - Miranda

   • Challenges the supposed omnibenevolence of God

3. "A spirit too delicate to act her earthy and abhorr'd commands" - Prospero

   • Natural magic is too pure for "earthy" or material desires, which are inherently impure

4. "This music crept by me upon the waters, allaying both their fury and my passion with its sweet air" - Ferdinand

   • Magic/nature is healing

5. "The air breathes upon us here most sweetly" - Adrian "As if it had lungs and rotten ones" - Sebastian

   • Nature/the world is reflective of character(its always ourselves we find in the sea)
   • "How lush and lusty the grass looks! How green!" - Gonzalo "The ground indeed is tawny" - Antonio

6. "All sleep except Alonso, Sebastian and Antonio"

   • Wicked characters immune to purity of magic

7. "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises, sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not" - Caliban

   • Lives in harmony with nature, civilised humans do not

8. "Though they are of monstrous shape, yet note their manners are more gentle-kind than of our human generation you shall find many, nay almost any" - Gonzalo

   • Natives of the island show more grace than civilised people

9. "The never-surfeited sea hath caus'd to belch up you" - Ariel

   • Wickedness is unnatural and rejected by natural forces

10. "For which foul deed, the powers delaying, not forgetting, have incens'd the seas and shores, yea all the creatures against your peace" - Ariel

    • Nature works against cruelty - suggests world restores balance of good and bad/karma

11. "The winds did sing it to me; and the thunder, that deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd the name of Prosper: it did bass my trespass" - Alonso

    • The earth has pronounced him guilty; morality is natural and it is nature that pronounces innocence or guilt

12. A born devil, on whose nature nurture can never stick" - Prospero "Which any print of goodness wilt not take, being capable of all ill!" - Miranda

    • Nature vs. nurture...nature is ultimately unchangeable?

13. "I have bedimm'd the noontide sun...I have given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak with his own bolt...graves at my command have wak'd their sleepers...but this rough magic I here abjure" - Prospero

    • Guilty of hubris, playing God, must renounce power to restore balance and achieve peace

14. "Their understanding begins to swell and the approaching tide will shortly fill the reasonable shore, that now lies foul and muddy" - Prospero

    • Healing power of nature