Key Quote
“"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here"”
Ariel (reporting) · Act 1, Scene 2
Focus: “devils”
Ariel reports the terrified mariners' cry during the storm — a line that collapses the boundary between the supernatural and the human, suggesting that human evil equals or surpasses hellish torment.
Technique 1 — HYPERBOLIC METAPHOR / INFERNAL IMAGERY
The hyperbolichyperbolic — deliberately exaggerated claim that hell has emptied itself onto the ship creates a vision of absolute terror. The infernal imageryinfernal imagery — imagery relating to hell transforms a natural storm into a supernatural event — the mariners perceive Prospero's magic as demonicdemonic — Relating to or resembling demons; supernaturally evil intervention. This reveals how power, when exercised invisibly, is experienced by its victims as incomprehensible evil.
The word 'here' is theatrically potent: spoken on stage, it includes the audience in 'here' — the theatre, London, the human world. Shakespeare collapses the distance between the play's island and the audience's reality, suggesting that human cruelty exists everywhere, not just in fiction. The line becomes metatheatricalmetatheatrical — Theatre that is aware of itself as performance — the stage is simultaneously the island and the audience's world.
Key Words
RAD — STAGNATE
The line is reported speech — Ariel conveys the mariners' terror without experiencing it himself. Ariel stagnates because he is an instrument, not an agent: he executes Prospero's commands without moral engagement. His stagnation mirrors the condition of all who serve power — carrying out orders without questioning their justice.
Key Words
Technique 2 — BINARY COLLAPSE
The line destroys the binarybinary — A system of two opposing categories treated as mutually exclusive of hell/earth — if hell is empty and its inhabitants are here, then earth IS hell. This binary collapse challenges the comforting Christian division between earthly life and damnation, suggesting that suffering does not wait for an afterlife but exists in the present. Shakespeare uses this theological disruption to frame the play's central concern: the relationship between power and suffering.
The conjunction 'and' connecting 'Hell is empty' with 'all the devils are here' creates a chilling causal logiccausal logic — Reasoning that connects causes to their effects: because hell is empty, the devils must be here. The simplicity of the grammar — two short clauses — makes the horror more effective through understatementunderstatement — Expressing something with less emphasis or force than expected.
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Context (AO3)
JACOBEAN DEMONOLOGY
King James I wrote *Daemonologie* (1597), expressing genuine belief in witchcraft and demonic possession. Shakespeare's audience would have taken the idea of devils walking the earth literally — making this line more terrifying than modern audiences might appreciate.
COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS
European colonisers frequently described indigenous peoples as 'devils' — projecting their own violence onto those they conquered. The line ironically inverts this: it is the European sailors who encounter 'devils,' yet the real violence comes from Prospero, the European coloniser.
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WOW — ORIENTALISM & OTHERING (Said)
Edward Said's OrientalismOrientalism — Said's theory of how the West constructs and dominates 'Eastern' cultures through stereotyping describes how Western cultures construct 'the Other' as savage, irrational, and demonic to justify domination. The mariners' cry that 'all the devils are here' enacts this OtheringOthering — The process of defining a group as fundamentally different and inferior process: the unfamiliar is immediately coded as evil. But Shakespeare complicates Said's framework by making the source of terror not indigenous 'savagery' but Prospero's European magic — the coloniser IS the devil. The play thus exposes the projection at the heart of colonial ideology: Europeans called others 'devils' while enacting the greater violence themselves.
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