Hag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold

The first part of Hag-Seed introduces the central character, Felix, as an embittered artist who desperately seeks ways to nurse his ego. To deal with his grief over losing his family and his beloved job, Felix immerses his mind in the world of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the last play he would have seen to production for the theater festival.

Felix immediately draws parallels between his life and The Tempest, consciously and subconsciously. The Tempest features a sorcerer named Prospero who lives on a deserted island with his daughter Miranda. Felix names his own daughter after this character in The Tempest, so his decision to stage The Tempest after her death indicates that Felix attempts to escape his real life through the life he can create and control on the stage. The links between Felix and Prospero are multilayered. Like Prospero, whose sorcery enables him to create illusions of grand feasts and other false realities, Felix creates illusions on the stage. Prospero’s seclusion on the island mirrors Felix’s self-seclusion in his shack of a home in the aftermath of losing his job. Because Felix leans into and commits to his isolated life with fantasies of Miranda still by his side, Felix seems to consciously desire the role of Prospero. Prospero is powerful, controlling, and full of vengeance, so Felix finds both a sympathetic character and a model in Prospero. Prospero wants revenge on his brother Antonio (now Duke of Milan in Prospero’s place), who betrayed him and stranded him on his island. Similarly, Felix wants revenge on Tony (a name that evokes Antonio), who betrayed him by orchestrating his firing and taking his illustrious theater job. Like Prospero, who waits years for his opportunity to take vengeance on Antonio, Felix is comfortable waiting years for his opportunity to get back at Tony. Prospero is a natural connection and a blueprint for Felix’s behaviors and intentions.

Furthermore, Atwood draws thematic parallels between Hag-Seed and The Tempest. One theme from The Tempest is coping with betrayal through redemption. When Felix takes the job as a teacher in a prison, he believes that this job will redeem his stature and ego in the years after his betrayal. Another theme in The Tempest deals with colonialism because Prospero enslaves the island’s native resident, Caliban, and seeks to make a colony of his secluded home. Similarly, in Felix’s eyes, the prisoners (who are stuck in the prison much like Caliban is stuck on the island) are unworthy of his brilliance. Felix doesn’t take pride in his role helping these students access the incredible plots and themes of Shakespeare’s plays. Instead, Felix thinks the prisoners should feel lucky to have him as a teacher. Because Felix puts his own ego ahead of the integrity of the Shakespearean text and the dignity of his students, his Shakespeare class becomes a venue for stretching his power.

The Shakespearean nature of this book comes from its allusions to The Tempest and through the Shakespearean nature of Felix’s perspective. Felix describes the depths of his pain with imagery that evokes dark clouds—imagery taken directly from The Tempest. Even the death of his family evokes plot points from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Both Felix’s wife, Natalia, and his daughter died from unexpected health issues made more unexpected by his living in the 21st century. It is uncommon in a country like Canada circa 2013 to know one family member who died from a treatable health issue, let alone two. The absurd circumstances of his family’s death affect Felix’s mental health.

The structure of this novel is important to the development of its themes. The novel begins with a foreboding prologue that flashes the reader forward to an event that will occur in later chapters. Starting in media res and then flashing back to the past keeps readers engaged in the search for clues that will lead to the event alluded to in the Prologue. Furthermore, the book’s unreliable narrator complicates its structure. Though the narration is not first person, Felix’s perspective drives the plot. In Felix’s mind, the world and specifically Tony are working against him. Because the reader sees this story through the point of view of a character who admits to his own madness, Felix’s analyses of other peoples’ actions are suspicious. Did Tony truly try to ruin Felix’s career when Felix was already reeling from the death of his three-year-old daughter? Or was Tony forced to fire Felix because Felix was acting erratically, threatening the success of the play and the theater festival?

Atwood’s novel is structured in five parts. This is a direct allusion to Shakespearean plays, which are (mostly) structured in five acts. In a Shakespearean play, the first act often contains the exposition, introducing context, characters, and the primary conflict of the play. In Atwood’s Part 1, the reader encounters the main characters (Felix and Tony), the context (Felix’s loss of family and job), and the primary conflict (Felix’s firing and his desire to take revenge on Tony). This structure further emphasizes the unreliable narrator, who sees the world like a Shakespearean play.