Ariel vs. Caliban in _The Tempest_

Fuseli, Henry. Ariel. c. 1800-10.

 So as I going over (and over, and over) The Tempest these past couple of weeks, one of the things that really struck me was Prospero's relationships with Caliban and Ariel. Both were creatures of some form that inhabited the island and were both taken in as slaves, essentially, to Prospero, yet they were treated and were treated by Prospero so differently. Caliban's character is this deformed brute, the spawn of the moon-witch Sycorax and devil, while Ariel is an air-spirit who can command the spirits of other elements. Prospero sees himself as the rescuer of sorts of both Caliban and Ariel - he gave Caliban shelter and taught him to speak his language, and freed Ariel from a tree where he was imprisoned, and in return for these "favors" he binds Caliban to fetching his wood and Ariel to performing various trickeries of the Naples crew. Yet while Prospero praises Ariel one moment ("Fine apparition! My quaint Ariel, hark in thine ear" [Shakespeare 1.2.317-18]) he turns around and barks at Caliban, "Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself upon thy wicked dam, come forth!" (Shakespeare 1.2.319-20). It was pretty funny actually to see how completely different treatment Caliban and Ariel received from Prospero, so I decided to look into what these two characters might be supposed to represent, what Shakespeare's intention may have been in creating this contrast.
As this is a play that is roughly four centuries old, of course it was pretty difficult to find any concrete, factual information about what Shakespeare himself was trying to convey with these two characters, but I did find a few articles by scholars giving their interpretations of the contrast between Caliban and Ariel. There were a lot that argued the The Tempest was in a sense Shakespeare's commentary on colonization of native civilizations in the New World, that Caliban and Ariel embodied the different way natives were viewed and treated based on their level of cooperation with their colonizer (Caliban being the ungrateful rebel and Ariel the glorious example of what can happen if you do all you can to please the power that freed you from your previous entrapment) - here's a link to an article on Columbia's website that I found particularly interesting: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html

However (and who knows why, maybe it has something to do with being raised by a mother who majored in Psych), the interpretations that struck me the most were the ones that looked at Ariel and Caliban as conflicting aspects of Prospero's internal character. Here's a link to an article I found on a strange website called "Personality and Consciousness" and gives a "Jungian interpretation" of The Tempest: http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=the_tempest. It's a little out there, but I thought the underlying point was an interesting way of viewing Ariel and Caliban that I hadn't really thought of before. The article's author, Barry Beck, argues that Ariel embodies Prospero's conscious mind - that over which he has control over, the civilized part, that

Buchel, Charles.
Herbert Beerbohm Tree As Caliban. 1904.

which he can rely on as a means to achieving an end. Caliban on the other hand embodies Prospero's more animalistic subconscious mind - that which he can punish but not entirely control, the ugly monster who is nonetheless an part of the island that Prospero can't get rid of (Beck). I do agree with this perspective - Ariel is a charming spirit who speaks in nicely flowing rhymes and carries out Prospero's every order to perfection, while Caliban is, well, the son of the devil, who says vulgar things, resents being given orders (for the reason that he is part of the nature of the island and feels the island thus belongs to him), and wanted to populate the island with Prospero's daughter (Shakespeare 1.2.349-51). By utilizing Ariel, Prospero consciously controls nearly all of the characters and events occurring around him almost exactly to his will, yet Caliban still crashes the finale, drunk and wearing stolen clothes.
While I was interested in thinking about the political and psychological interpretations of these two characters, my personal interpretation that I came to find was more a combination of both perspectives. I think the discovery of the New World and the interactions with the people and environment there permanently shook up the Old World's psyche, which was reflected in its politics, scientific ideologies, and art - and this includes The Tempest. Without intending to, Western civilization was in a sense sucked into a storm of mysterious creatures and environments, and they had the technological means to take power over it all, but struggled with how exactly to use this power - to free or not to free if you will. To me, Ariel and Caliban embody different parts of mankind's reaction to encountering a purely wild world. As Gonzalo put it, "All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement inhabits here" (Shakespeare 5.1.104-5) - some parts were ugly and wicked, some parts were beautiful and liberating, but both were necessary advancing the shipwrecked group to the next phase in their lives on a personal level and as a greater society.

Works Cited

Beck, Barry. "Shakespeare's The Tempest: A Jungian Interpretation". Personality and Consciousness. eLearners.com. 1993. 08 Sep 2013. <http://pandc.ca/?cat=carl_jung&page=the_tempest>.

O'Toole, Michael. "Shakespeare's Natives: Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest". Quixotic: An Electronic Journal of Experimental LitHum Texts. Columbia University. 08 Sep 2013. <http://www.columbia.edu/itc/lithum/gallo/tempest.html>.

Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1960. Print.