wpe16.gif (30988 bytes)

Caliban

A complicated and mysterious figure, he is a slave to Prospero and Miranda, and is the son of the powerful witch who inhabited the island before Prospero came. Prospero and others call him a "monster" and a "thing of darkness," but it is not clear whether he is meant to be a wild and shaggy-haired man, a dark-skinned man, or something stranger and not quite human. (This is one of the great mysteries of The Tempest.) His name is an anagram of the word "cannibal" (which, in its Renaissance spelling--"canibal"--often referred simply to the "savage" people of the newly-discovered Americas, without reference to eating habits).

Caliban is represented by Archie Bunker of All In The Family: Even though Archie may seem gruff, insensitive, and void of manners, he is really a caring person who wants to be accepted, just as Caliban is.