Key Quote
“"This island's mine, by Sycorax my mother, which thou tak'st from me"”
Caliban · Act 1, Scene 2
Focus: “mine”
Caliban's declaration of indigenous ownership — grounding his claim in maternal inheritance — is the play's most direct challenge to Prospero's colonial authority.
Technique 1 — POSSESSIVE PRONOUN / DECLARATIVE ASSERTION
The possessive 'mine' and the declarative (statement presented as fact) sentence structure assert ownership with grammatical force. Caliban does not request or petition — he *states*. The simplicity of 'This island's mine' creates rhetorical power through directness: no metaphor, no ambiguity, just a claim of right. Shakespeare gives the colonised subject the play's most unequivocal statement of ownership.
The matrilineal (inherited through the mother) claim — 'by Sycorax my mother' — is significant: Caliban traces his right through his mother, not a father. This challenges the patrilineal (inherited through the father) system of European inheritance and offers an alternative model of belonging based on maternal connection to the land.
Key Words
RAD — REGRESS
Caliban has regressed from island ruler to enslaved servant — a trajectory that mirrors the experience of colonised peoples globally. His regression is not natural but imposed through Prospero's superior magic (read: technology). Shakespeare dramatises how colonialism redefines the indigenous population's position: from owner to slave, from subject to object.
Key Words
Technique 2 — ACCUSATORY SECOND PERSON — 'THOU TAK'ST'
The second-person address — 'thou tak'st from me' — directly accuses Prospero of theft. The verb 'tak'st' (take) is blunt and unambiguous: Prospero did not discover, settle, or civilise — he TOOK. Shakespeare refuses the euphemisms of colonial discourse, letting Caliban name the act for what it is: dispossession (the taking of someone's land or property).
The preposition 'from' emphasises direction: something has moved FROM Caliban TO Prospero. This spatial language makes the theft tangible and reversible — what was taken can, theoretically, be returned. Caliban's grammar implicitly demands restitution (the return of stolen property).
Key Words
Context (AO3)
NEW WORLD COLONISATION
The Tempest was written during the early colonisation of the Americas. The 1609 shipwreck of the *Sea Venture* in Bermuda directly influenced the play. Caliban's dispossession mirrors the experience of indigenous (originating in a particular place) peoples across the Americas, whose land was taken by European settlers claiming divine or civilisational right.
TERRA NULLIUS
European colonisers used the legal fiction of terra nullius ('empty land') to claim indigenous territories — arguing that because native peoples didn't 'use' land in European ways, it was effectively unowned. Caliban's speech directly refutes this doctrine by asserting prior ownership.
Key Words
WOW — SUBALTERN SPEECH (Spivak)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's famous question — '*Can the Subaltern Speak?*' — asks whether colonised subjects can express themselves within the coloniser's language and power structures. Caliban speaks in Prospero's language (as he bitterly acknowledges: 'You taught me language; and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse'). His claim to the island is articulated in the master's tongue — meaning his resistance is always already mediated through colonial structures. Spivak would note the paradox: Caliban can only assert his identity by using the very linguistic tools of his oppression. Shakespeare anticipates postcolonial theory by 400 years, dramatising the impossible position of the colonised subject who must speak the coloniser's language to be heard at all.
Key Words