Caliban Inside And Out Essay, Research Paper
Caliban Inside and Out
Question: Compare or contrast the ways in which roberto Fernandez Retamar and George Lamming
construct national identity through the figure of Caliban. Use Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”
if you need to to discuss Caliban.
In order to discuss the ways in which Retamar and Lamming have
constructed a national identity through Caliban it is essential to discuss the
cultural background of these writers. Retamar and Lamming are about as
dissimilar as night and day, and this is evident in both the lives that they
have led, as well as the essays that they have constructed. Their
differences have come from their experiences, and how they have
attempted to establish an identity for themselves and their people. It would
be easy to label them the ?pessimist Retamar,? and the ?optimist Lamming,?
or the Communist Retamar, and the Imperialist Lamming, yet this would
oversimplify a definition that is in no way simple. Rather, I shall use the
terms internal and external. For both of these men have traveled abroad in
their studies, and in their solidifying of the concept of Caliban, each has
chosen a separate point of view to attempt to identify the same ideal. For
Retamar his focus, as well as his point of view is wholly internal, while for
Lamming he looks on from the outside, the external, and writes of what
comes from Caliban, and how the world sees it.
I shall begin with Retamar. Here is a man who had tried early in his
life to give a face to Caliban. Retamar, a Marxist writer, described
Caliban by first pointing out that his very name is Shakespeare?s anagram
for cannibal. He is meant to be an Anthropophagus, a bestial eater of his
own kind. This was quite clearly an illustrious exaggeration on the part of
Shakespeare, and yet in Shakespeare?s time there were certainly islands
whose inhabitants would not hesitate to eat human flesh. But rather than
dwell on the cannibalistic or monstrous aspects of Caliban, as that would
surely not lend a helping hand toward the creation of a national identity,
Retamar focuses, from the beginning, on the one single aspect of Caliban
that has a meaning for him — rebellion. ?Our symbol is not Ariel, as Rodo
thought, ?he says, ?but rather Caliban. . . what is our history, what is our
culture, if not the history and culture of Caliban? (Retamar-14).
Retamar, as did Lamming, traveled in his youth, and taught school in
the United States. He had a chance to be away from his ?third world?
roots, and yet at the first sign of rebellion in Cuba, at the first opportunity
to be a part of the ongoing process of change, he left the U.S. He had to
go back to the islands, to be a part of the internal struggle. He tells of
having written articles supporting the downfall of Batista, and as soon as
he finds out that Batista has been ousted, and that Fidel Castro is the new
ruler of Cuba he leaves the U.S. He leaves a prestigious teaching job at
Columbia University in order to go back to Cuba where he teaches for more
than 30 years. Why did he leave? Because to Retamar, being a
descendant of Caliban means being a revolutionary. It means being
someone who wants change, and who pushes for change. Yet change, for
him, can only come from within. He wants desperately to be a part of the
creation of a culture that is unique. Not Latin-American, or
Ibero-American, etc, but something that is new.
Retamar even expresses a feeling akin to guilt at the proposal of the
use of Caliban as the symbol of his people, ?In proposing Caliban as our
symbol, I am aware that it is not entirely ours, that it is also an alien
elaboration, although in this case based on our concrete realities. But how
can this alien quality be entirely avoided?? (Retamar-16). Of course
Retamar does manage to escape this guilt when he credits Lamming and
Brathwaite with being the first writers to concretely connect the character,
Caliban, to their respective countries which today make up the modern day
Caribbean.
Retamar lived long in the islands, and drank heavily from the chalice
of Marxist rhetoric, this is evident in such passages of his as, ?Our culture
is — and can only be — the child of revolution, of our multisecular rejection of
all colonialisms.? (Retamar-38). It is also interesting to compare the
similarities between Retamar and Shakespeare?s Caliban. While away from
Prospero and gathering wood Caliban comes upon Stephano and Trinculo.
He immediately begins to offer his obeisance to these two new men, whom
he has never met before. He does this because, for him, this union must
not only be better than his relationship with Prospero, but through this new
allegiance he can have Prospero killed, and thus his immediate problem
solved. The similarity that I see here is that Retamar was willing to speak
out against Batista, although terrified, so he used a pen-name. He finally
became distraught with the knowledge that it was quite possible that
Batista would reign in Cuba forever, so he leaves and goes out in to the
U.S. (the woods). Yet when he hears of Castro?s success he quickly rushes
back to offer his allegiance to his n
Caliban than even he realises.
George Lamming is a completely different voice on the matter. He is
an exile by choice, and happy about it if one were to assume anything from
the title of his book, The Pleasures of Exile. He sees Caliban as more of a
?condition? than a cultural identity, yet unlike Retamar, he is looking from the
outside, inward. Having exiled himself to London, he writes from the
vantage point of a comfortable onlooker. He is not touched by the events
that happen in the Caribbean anywhere near as much as is Retamar, and
yet his thoughts seem to go much deeper and give a substantially greater
volume to the definition of what it means to be ?Caliban.?
Lamming writes from many different perspectives in his book,
possibly in an internal attempt to identify that which is Caliban. He uses
different identities, rhetorical conversations, even disguises. An example of
this is found when he describes an hypothetical encounter, and subsequent
conversation between an English woman, and three young Caribbean boys,
Singh (who represents the Indian contingent of the Caribbean), Lee (who
represents the Asian contingent), and Bob (who represents the African
contingent). His little African boy ?Bob? never goes into detail about how he
came by his name. Upon the woman asking about his name his reply is,
?Bob whatever you like? (Lamming-18) This is a way of pointing out, early
on, that some of the cultures that have flowed into the Caribbean are much
more dominant, as in Singh and Lee, and have retained some of their
original identity, while others are submissive, a they have been since they
were first brought forth from Africa into slavery, like ?Bob?, or in Lamming?s
case, ?George.? Neither of these are names that one would have found
among an Ashanti native tribe in Africa at the time, but were most
common in England, as well as the U.S.
For all of the voices that Lamming uses, and all of the guises, he
seems to be pointing to the fact that all of this variety has gone into what is
now the Caribbean, and hence Caliban. The many have become one.
?Caliban cannot be revealed in any relation to himself; for he has no self
which is not a reaction to circumstances imposed upon his life?
(Lamming-107). Caliban is, as Jose? Vasconcelos writes, a new and unique
race, ?made with the treasure of all previous ones, the final race, the
cosmic race.?1 Lamming reinforces this in the following, ?Caliban is the
very climate in which men encounter the nature of ambiguities, and in
which, according to his desire, each man attempts a resolution by trying to
slay the past? (Lamming-107). He describes Caliban?s history as turbulent,
as well he should. There has been civil unrest and uprisings in that part of
the world from the day that it was colonised, and henceforth enslaved, until
the present day. Lamming has left all of this behind to go into his self
imposed exile in London, and yet he cannot leave the ?identity? behind, for he
is the very embodiment of the identity that he has tried so hard to define.
To leave his homeland, and take his identity with him is not the real
difficulty. ?The difficulty,? he says,? is to take from Caliban without suffering
the pollution innate in his nature. To yield to Caliban?s natural generosity is
to risk the deluge: for his assets — such as they are — are dangerous, since
they are encrusted, buried deep in the dark. It is not by accident that his
skin is black; for black, too, is the colour of his loss; the absence of any
soul? (Lamming 107-108).
Even though Lamming has chosen to live on the ?outside? and write
about the ?inside? he has a good sense of the spirit of what is Caliban. Yet
unlike Retamar, Lamming has another sense. He has a sense of the
people around him, of the people in the Metropolis that is London. Where
Retamar has made up his mind that Caliban is practically synonymous with
?revolution,? Lamming sees Caliban as a potential for growth and change.
Retamar?s views are probably somewhat isolated after 30 years of writing
and teaching within the Communist Castro regime, he lacks the ability, it
would seem, to be able to see anything beyond the past. He carries the
past with him. Yet Lamming looks to the future. He describes the points
of view of three hypothetical children, of different origins in an attempt to
get at the future. Perhaps the most optimistic view that he offers us
comes from a discussion that he has with a young boy in London.
Lamming, after having grown excited that the boy didn?t just accept his
answer of having come from the West Indies at face value, but rather gets
a map to look it up, says that though, ?That boy was no more than nine
years old. If he can preserve that spirit of curiosity and concreteness, his
generation will save West Indians and others the torture of adult
indifference? (Lamming-16). To Lamming, this boy represents the future,
and the good that may still come out of that which is Caliban.
Lamming, George, The Pleasures of Exile, 1992, Michigan
Retamar, Roberto Fernandez, Caliban, and Other Essays, 1989, Minnesota
Shakespeare, William, The Tempest