Exile And Redemption:a Spiritual Journey In The Tempest

Exile and redemption are significant motifs of spiritual journey not only in the religious field but also in The Tempest:The hero crosses watery wastes impelled by power beyond his will; he arrives on islands or strands beyond the reach of the real; and there finds a perfection of soul that makes actuality endurable when he returns to it.In the Introduction pivots upon previous researches into exile and redemption in Shakespearean criticism, which shows that most scholars just focus on one aspect of the round journey, apart from Northrop Frye having a thorough exploration of this metaphoric circle in Shakespearean plays. Fry observes that the Bible has provided Shakespeare a U-shaped curve in narration which recurrently starts with a descent into misunderstanding and misfortune, then with repentance and concludes with reconciliation and rise in comedies, while the inverted U is a typical shape of Shakespearean tragedy, rising to a point of reversal of action, then plunging downward to a catastrophe. However. Frye has not gone far enough into The Tempest for a detailed analysis, whereby the significance of this thesis arises.Chapter One initiates the first phase of this spiritual journey via exploration into two major sins in The Tempest, namely, the taking of forbidden knowledge and attempted murder of one's own brother. Some discussion of these Christian doctrines may clarify certain obscure references to Shakespeare's frequent allusions to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and to Cain's murder of Abel, leading to divine punishment of the two serious sins committed by mankind.The exile of the sinners in The Tempest is the major concern of Chapter Two. Characters such as Prospero and Antonio, who have committed the religious sin of stealing the secret of forbidden knowledge or attempting to put an end to the life of his brother, are doomed to be confronted with the fate of banishment away from their homeland towards an isolated strand, undergoing a terrible journey of hellish purgatory where the exiles are inflicted with the tortures of being swallowed by overwhelming loneness and thrust into monstrous environment and fighting with the evils. Moreover, unbearable sense of hatred turns Prospero into a Satan firing revenge against his enemies via tempest, slavery, illusory banquet, tempting liquor, which further worsen the sense of sinfulness and banishmentChapter Three triggers the topic of redemption, which is the utmost end of this play and concludes the journey of Christian myth of salvation. The Tempest parallels The Bible when redemption is achieved via turning away from physical desires (power, property, sex, etc.) towards spirituality. In the meantime forgiveness is another means of moving towards redemption, by which Prospero, like a God of mercy, pardons the wrongs done by his enemies while other sinners come to recognize their own follies. Hence reconciliation is achieved, which duplicates a revelatory journey of spirituality in Christianity.After recouping the statement of the spiritual journey, the Conclusion tracks out an organic motif in Christianity, esp., Prospero's story remarkably paralleling with that of Joseph in Genesis. Initially, Joseph and Prospero resemble each other as victims of jealous siblings. But Joseph and Prospero return vengeance with forgiveness and reconciliation, which forms a perfect metaphor of roundness in spirituality. However, it remains uncertain whether the Utopian journey of spirituality starting from sin and exile can turn out to be a perfect redemption without the illusory assistance of magic, or whether further tragedy would be restaged, which prompts a critical interrogation for all humankind to meditate on the relationship between the reality and fictional world.