Summary
As Alonso and Gonzalo sit down to eat, they get interrupted by the entrance of a group of Elves, who carry the table away. The Elves immediately bring back the food, and the men try to resist eating it. Prospero speaks to Ariel, upset that Alonso refuses to eat the food for fear of being tricked, and urges him to harass them into eating. He wants them to be submissive to him, saying, "I am Power." The men eat, before putting up their hammocks and going to sleep.
Scene 3. Antonio and Sebastian watch as Alonso and Gonzalo sleep. Antonio suggests, "You're really a bloodless lily-liver if you can see a king asleep without getting certain ideas..." Antonio speaks in metaphors, encouraging Sebastian to kill Alonso and take his brother's power. Antonio talks about the fact that he knew "when to shake the coconut palm" and expel his brother Prospero. As Antonio and Sebastian draw their swords, Ariel enchants the swords and awakens Alonso and Gonzalo.
As Alonso awakens, Ariel tells him that he is lucky that he awakened him, and that Prospero sent him. "It is he who reigns over this isle, as he reigns over the spirits of the air you breathe..." Ariel says, telling Alonso to repent. Ariel tells Alonso that Miranda is engaged to Ferdinand, and Alonso is relieved to hear that his son is still alive.
Act 3, Scene 1. Ferdinand is working and singing, as Caliban watches and bemoans his fate. As Miranda enters, she says to Ferdinand, "You don't look like you were cut out for this kind of work!" Ferdinand asks her to tell him her name, but she insists that her father forbids it. Caliban goes to Ferdinand and whispers Miranda's name in her ear. When Ferdinand says that he will call her "Miranda," she becomes upset that Caliban has told him.
Prospero enters and is impressed by Ferdinand's work. He tells Ferdinand that there are "three things in life": Work, Patience, Continence. He dismisses Ferdinand and tells Caliban to take over, but Caliban does not want to do Ferdinand's job. As it begins to rain, Caliban gets to work, grumbling about his mistreatment.
Scene 2. Trinculo, a jester, enters singing "Oh Susannah." Suddenly, he spots Caliban and tries to determine whether Caliban is dead or alive. He decides that if Caliban is dead, he will steal his clothes, and if he's alive, he will take him back to Europe as a prisoner and make money by using him as a spectacle.
Stephano, Alonso's butler, enters singing as well and drinking wine from a bottle. He is excited when he spots Caliban. Like Trinculo, he has the idea of selling Caliban to a carnival to make money. Suddenly, he sees Trinculo's head under the wheelbarrow and for a moment thinks that Caliban has two heads and four arms.
Analysis
Prospero is defined by his desire for power and dominance over others. Having been stripped of his power as the Duke of Naples, he is hellbent on not only enslaving the supernatural beings on his island, but also getting his revenge on the men who have slighted him. As he watches the royals from Naples attempt to eat the food that he is putting out for them, he instructs Ariel to harass them until they eat. Ariel questions Prospero, saying, "It's evil to play with their hunger as you do with their anxieties and their hopes," and Prospero replies, "That is how power is measured. I am Power." In his eyes, he is not only powerful, but Power itself.
The play reveals that the struggle and search for power is a fluid and changeable thing. As Antonio and Sebastian watch Alonso and Gonzalo sleeping, Antonio encourages Sebastian to kill Alonso and take his brother's power, just as he took Prospero's power as the Duke of Milan. At the center of the narrative is a group of men who are vying for a limited amount of power, all while pretending to be supplicating one another. As Ariel so aptly characterizes it, "With these fine fellows with their long teeth and swords around, anyone who sleeps too soundly risks sleeping forever."
In this section, Alonso, Gonzalo, Sebastian, and Antonio learn that Prospero is the ruler of the island and that he hopes for them to repent. They have not realized that Prospero is still alive, and are surprised to hear that he is ruling the island. As soon as Alonso hears that Ferdinand is alive, he is relieved, and barely thinks about the fact that he is in the clutches of Prospero—the man that he helped to betray. The entire narrative begins to gain momentum as the stage is set for a reunion between the two factions.
Throughout the play, Caliban is treated with disrespect and racist attitudes by all of the non-black characters, regardless of their status. Miranda accuses Caliban of being obsessed with her and of uttering her name in his sleep. Moments later, Prospero rewards Ferdinand (his would-be son-in-law) for the little work he has done and orders Caliban to pick up where Ferdinand left off. Then, when Trinculo enters, he says of the sleeping Caliban, "If he's dead, I can use his clothes for shelter, for a coat, a tent, a covering. If he's alive I'll make him my prisoner and take him back to Europe and then, by golly, my fortune will be made!" In both fantasies, Trinculo plans to make use of the slave, to either take from him or else use the spectacle of his race for economic gain. Stephano has the same fantasy about profiting off of Caliban.
By explicitly making Caliban a non-white character, Césaire exposes Shakespeare's story's specific themes of domination and subjugation in a postcolonial light. In showing the way that nearly every character takes advantage of and looks down on Caliban, Césaire frames Shakespeare's monster not simply as a fearsome beast, but as a human being who is living within a nightmarish political structure of disenfranchisement and both physical and structural violence.
