A Comparison of Slavery in The Tempest and Beloved

            In Beloved, theme of slavery is blatantly apparent as a result of the story’s setting, taking place in a community largely composed of former, freed slaves, and its characters, Sethe being the former-slave matriarch of her family at 124. In The Tempest, the same surface-level observations about slavery are true, although slightly more implicit, with Prospero’s self-proclaimed possession of Caliban and Ariel, made clear by his controlling attitude he takes toward them. Aside from the physical and literal aspects of slavery in Beloved and The Tempest, slavery is used in both novels as an entity that constricts and controls characters and subsequent events of the story, an entity whose aftermath affects everyone involved - both slave and owner – and an entity that has capabilities of breaking will and spirit.
            Slavery is portrayed as a restricting force in the hold it has on Prospero’s ego in The Tempest and in its hold on Sethe’s mind and thoughts. In the Tempest, Prospero’s inability to move forward in his attempt to regain his dukedom derives from his obsession with possession and ownership of subjects and servants. Much in the way of slavery, Prospero’s dukedom was characterized by neglect and lack of care for his subjects, despite his figurative ownership of them, and preceded his great fall from power. While on the island, Prospero finds great satisfaction in holding Caliban and Ariel as his “slaves”, furthering his treatment of them as such in his justification that they are essentially indebted to him for the good deeds he has done for them. In Beloved, Sethe cannot move forward mentally and emotionally from her past as a slave. She finds it initially difficult to accept Paul D into her home and has been largely cast out by her community, leaving her, along with Denver, alone and unhappy despite her now being free from slavery.
            Throughout the book, all of Sethe’s struggles originate from her past as a slave. She cannot seem to distance herself from her past, and it can be said that it is inextricably linked to the sequence of events in the story. Similarly, Prospero’s role as a slave owner brings forth all of the difficulties he has in coming back into power. At one point, Stamp Paid goes on to say “it invaded the whites who had made it…made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made.” Comparing the two novels exhibits Stamp Paid’s claim and validates it; both Prospero and Sethe are negatively affected by their roles in slavery as owner and slave, respectively.
            In addition to the paralleling consequences suffered by either role in slavery, each role being equally negative, both Prospero and Sethe fall suffer personal consequences that demonstrate that slavery is characterized as an emotionally deteriorating substance. Slavery’s effect in the Tempest shows the degradation of Prospero’s dignity, although his ego remains large, as well as his increasing inability to control his ego and extreme desire for power; this becomes apparent when his feelings about his daughter’s marriage to Ferdinand become implicitly rooted in his desire to use Ferdinand to regain power. According to the online article “Relationships of Thralldom and Ownership in The Tempest by William Shakespeare”, http://www.academia.edu/8042407/Relationships_of_Slavery_and_Dominion_in_the_Tempest_by_Shakespeare, for the National Autonomous University of Mexico by Ian Iracheta, describes the progression of Prospero and Caliban’s relationship from decent to hateful, as Prospero’s ownership of Caliban eventually leads Caliban into realizing he had “lost his liberty”. Meanwhile, in Beloved, Sethe’s will and self-control are equally broken down over time and peak at times such as when she neglects Denver, ignores her almost completely, and fights constantly with Beloved.
            Ultimately, consideration of the two novels demonstrates that slavery, in both cases, is depicted so that that its figurative and literal influence encompasses not just the events of the plot, but nearly all of the literary elements and characters involved. The article “Relationships of Thralldom and Ownership in The Tempest by William Shakespeare” by Ian Iracheta, describes the interconnecting web of servitude of characters and their relationships, as well as slavery being represented by literary elements such as Prospero’s magic abilities in The Tempest, which offer yet another form of implicit “slavery”, seeing that he can control the tempest and therefore have dominating control over others. This emphasizes my earlier claim of the vast span of slavery as a literary and plot-determining device, seeing that Beloved demonstrates the very same ideals as described in Iracheta’s article.