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

Caliban was and remains a symptom of the white man, of Prospero. While Caliban remains an object occupying Prospero’s space, the white man then becomes the subject. Caliban has been constructed by Prospero; it is an imagined construction, one that a postcolonial perspective seeks to correct by shifting him away from the idea of being a symptom. In an attempt to demystify the notion of symptom as parallel to Caliban, Chow’s explanation refers back to Lamming’s discussion: Prospero (the White man) needs Caliban (the native subject and object of the colonizer’s gaze) to justify his motives and validate himself in terms of the civilized world. Therefore, Chow argues that Caliban, through Prospero’s eyes, is the object in the subject of colonial imperialism (125).

The interpretation that has been provided in reference to Caliban as the other is an extension of Prospero’s own sense of self. Lack of knowledge or fear of the unknown has created the stage for the classification of that which is outside and different from the center.² According to both Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, Prospero validates himself by imposing the category of different on those who do not meet his expectations. Therefore, the imposition of colonial imperialism on Caliban represents a way for Prospero to be distinguished from the colonized. It is the notion that everything can be colonized given the idea that while some are meant to rule others have to be ruled. The justification for this undertaking was often based on racial and cultural differences. It is how Prospero manipulates Caliban: “The ‘othering’ of vast numbers of people, and their construction as backward and inferior depended upon…the ‘Manichean Allegory,’