Reinaldo Arenas, Caliban, and Postcolonial Discourse By Enrique ...

(Alden T. Vaughan 137). Thus, Caliban’s condition in the play replicates the colonial relationship between the Prosperos and the Calibans. D. H. Lawrence opposes the depictions of Caliban thus far. Lawrence states that he identifies Caliban: “Shakespeare’s monster with America’s transplanted Europeans, not with its aborigines…the bulk of the colonist seemed masterless: Somewhere deep in every American heart lies a rebellion against the old parenthood of Europe” (qtd. in A. T. Vaughan 145). Therefore, according to Lawrence’s objections, Caliban is but a perfect reflection of what the New Worlder was. However, due to traditional imperialistic practices, Caliban’s qualities were depicted as negative to reinforce the premise that Prospero was Caliban’s savior. Lawrence’s words would be echoed in the writings of intellectuals and such scholars as José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, Rubén Darío, Aimé Césaire, and Roberto Fernández Retamar. These words are also resounding of the perceived fear by the colonizer of the colonized native subject, which partakes of the traditional romanticizing of people who were more natural and closer to the earth.

Calibanistic Otherness

Caliban no longer remains in the periphery. Instead he is transitory, merging into the center, existing in a “third space”: “[W]e find ourselves in the moment of transit where space and time cross to produce complex figures of difference and identity, past and present, inside and outside, inclusion and exclusion” (Bhabha 1). This idea introduces an interesting argument with regard to Caliban and the attempt at reconstructing his past, perhaps not in his present, but in a space that is neither here nor there. According to Bhabha there is no separation or splitting apart of the connection between the past, present, and future. He explains that one depends on the other, creating a place in