The theme of these two texts, one from Act 1, Scene 2 of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, and the other from the first chapter, No Name Woman, of The Woman Warrior by Maxine Kingston, is the love a parent has for their child, although the texts approach this topic in different ways. In addition to this, the texts differ in many aspects including style and the time period they were written in, yet they both manage to successfully convey the emotions the authors were trying to convey.
The text from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a scene of a conversation between Caliban, Prospero, and Miranda. Caliban is seen cursing Prospero, and regretting that he was kind to him and helped him when he got onto the island. Prospero responds by saying that he treated Caliban very well, better than what he deserved, and reveals that Caliban tried to rape his daughter, Miranda. Miranda states that Caliban was from then on kept prisoner in the cave, “deservedly.” Caliban was Prospero’s slave, and he was useful to Prospero, but in order to protect his daughter, he confines Caliban to the cave, eliminating the danger.
In the text from The Woman Warrior, we see the no-name aunt giving birth to her baby. As a part of Chinese tradition, the aunt gives birth in the pigsty, in order to protect the child from the ghosts that want to take the baby. However, the protection of its mother is not enough for the illegitimate child to survive. With no family, no descent line, the baby will live like a ghost, with no purpose in life. The aunt jumps into the family well, taking the baby along with her, an act done out of love for the child, trying to protect the baby from growing up all alone with nothing to live for. The no-name aunt, instead of eliminating the danger like Prospero, tries to run away from the danger, and even if that means killing the baby along with herself, it shows that she tries to protect her child.
Although similar in theme, these two texts are quite different in style. While The Tempest is a play, written as a script, The Woman Warrior is a collection of memoirs, written in prose. This does not only affect the style of the texts but also the thoughts and emotions the authors try to communicate. As The Tempest is made up of dialogue between people, we get to see the same event from different points of views, and see what different characters have to say about the events taking place. For example, we can see that Caliban does not enjoy being Prospero’s slave and prisoner, but Miranda thinks Caliban got what he deserved and appreciates what her father has done to protect her. In The Woman Warrior, we only get to see one point of view, so we don’t know what the child or the family thinks about the no-name aunt killing herself, but we get to see the aunt’ thoughts, that she took the child with her when she was going to die because she loved it. However, the narrator is retelling stories she heard from her mother, and as she imagines things about what might have happened, it is hard to know how reliable the story is.
Another big difference between these two texts is the language used. William Shakespeare uses older words compared to those in The Woman Warrior, and sometimes shortens the words, like “o’th’ island,” to be able stick to the iambic pentameter. The language used by Maxine Kingston is simpler, and easier to understand. In addition to this, Maxine Kingston uses less varied punctuation marks compared to William Shakespeare. While exclamation marks and apostrophes can be seen in The Tempest, only periods and commas with one question mark and one dash are seen in The Woman Warrior. The length of the sentences in The Tempest also varies more than those in The Woman Warrior. The text from The Tempest consists of some short sentences like “I must eat my dinner” and some longer sentences like “ I have used thee, filth as thou art, with human care, and lodged thee in mine own cell till thou didst seek to violate the honor of my child,” while the sentences in The Woman Warrior are made up of approximately twenty words.
The tone of the writing is also something that is different in these texts, and it affects the ideas the authors try to communicate. In The Tempest, the characters speak with anger and regret, and an image of three people arguing comes to mind. This makes the reader think about if Prospero was really doing the right thing or not. On the other hand, The Woman Warrior has a calm and melancholic tone, like a story, which helps the reader understand why the aunt did what she did. The mood of The Woman Warrior is also more light-hearted, with images of “a young calf, a piglet, a little dog” compared to the gloomy mood of The Tempest, with images of “toads, beetles, bats.”
The Tempest and The Woman Warrior are very different when compared in style, tone, mood, images, language and other similar things. However, both of them manage to convey the idea that parents always do their best to protect their children, even if they do this in different ways.
