Prospero’s Daughter by Elizabeth Nunez
“To walk silently
in the forest,
and not shake a leaf, to move
and not disturb a branch.
At twilight
let me walk—
to the drum of impending
rest, caught between sleeping and waking—
when rocks turn
malleable in the growing night, softening
to the touch of deepening
shade” (Nunez, 208).
Link to novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181435.Prospero_s_Daughter
Prospero’s Daughter is an adaptation of The Tempest set on a Caribbean island. In this novel, Prospero, or Peter Gardner, is the powerful and cruel colonial figure, while both Virginia (Miranda) and Carlos (Caliban) are oppressed by him. They eventually fall in love and have to confront Peter and systems of race, power and colonialism.
The excerpt above is written by the Caliban of this story, Carlos. Like Shakespeare’s Caliban, he literally creates poetry, and both of their poems are directly intertwined with the love of their islands. But while Caliban is a contrasting, ambiguous character, Carlos is the unequivocal hero of this story.
Nunez’s Caliban is a proud and intelligent one. Because of his biracial status (half black, half white) many characters undermine him (the story is set during the 1960s, drawing on colonial tensions between Britain and Trinidad). Yet, Carlos constantly exceeds the expectations of those around him. The ones who do think him inferior (like Peter) are revealed to be morally corrupt. Characters associated with goodness, like Virginia, don’t underestimate Carlos or see him as different. And everyone largely agrees that Carlos is handsome and rather intelligent, despite his background. Through this characterization then, Nunez explicitly tells the reader that racism, classism and colonialism are what make Carlos seem to be savage. He is not “savage” of his own self. There is no ambiguity in how Nunez interprets this Caliban character: he is noble.
Poetry of Caliban 