Colonialism in The Tempest and Season of Migration to the North

Both William Shakespeare's play The Tempest and Tayeb Salih's novel Season of Migration to the North deal with the cultural tensions arising as a result of colonialism, albeit in different historical moments and from different sides of the colonizer–colonized relationship. Whereas The Tempest deals with the European reaction to the colonization of the then-New World and follows a European protagonist confronting a demonized other, Season of Migration to the North follows two protagonists' mirrored experiences returning to Sudan from their time in England, and their difficulties integrating Sudanese and English cultural identities. The two texts offer a way of understanding not only the varied reactions to colonialism and its consequences, but also how those reactions have been received and interpreted by a critical audience.

By examining The Tempest and Season of Migration to the North alongside critical responses to these texts, it becomes possible to see how Salih's novel uses the colonizer's fears of retribution — as expressed in Shakespeare's play — as a way of considering the trauma of colonization and actively combating the cultural stereotypes deployed in the name of colonialism.

Before considering the broader ramifications of either text's treatment of colonialism, it will be useful to examine each text for those moments in which colonialism becomes most relevant and its consequences are felt most explicitly.

In The Tempest, the character of Caliban is most commonly the focus of any investigation into the play's consideration of colonialism, and a look at his backstory as well as his relationship to the protagonist Prospero reveals why.

By the time Prospero and his daughter Miranda are exiled to the island that serves as the play's setting, Caliban has already been living there for some time. His mother, Sycorax, was banished "for mischiefs manifold and sorceries terrible / To enter human hearing, from Argier," and "left by the sailors" on the island while she was pregnant with Caliban (Shakespeare 1.2.264–265, 270). Immediately, Caliban's character is identified with the effects of colonialism: his mother is banished from her home in Africa for practicing ill-defined "mischiefs manifold and sorceries" too terrible to enter "human" hearing — and in this context, as Prospero is the speaker, "human" effectively means "European." This distinction between the "human" Europeans and the inhuman other is repeated when Prospero describes Caliban's birth, calling him "A freckled whelp hag-born — not honour'd with / A human shape" (Shakespeare 1.2.283–284). Prospero's treatment of Caliban conforms to many of the stereotypes relied upon by colonizers to justify their inhumane treatment of colonized peoples, and the relationship between Prospero and Caliban closely mirrors the interactions between early English settlers in America and Native Americans.

When Caliban is first introduced, he recounts that he and Prospero initially had a mutually beneficial relationship: "When thou camest first / Thou strokedst me and madest much of me, wouldst give me / Water with berries in't, and teach me how / To name the bigger light, and how the less / That burn by day and night: and then I loved thee / And show'd thee all the qualities o' the isle / The fresh springs, brine-pits, barren place and fertile" (Shakespeare 1.2.332–338). This account hews closely to the favored colonialist narrative of "civilizing" the inhabitants of conquered lands, with the "animalistic" native gratefully showing his colonial master the workings of the New World of the island. Prospero belabors this point, telling Caliban: "I pitied thee / Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour / One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage / Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish, I endow'd thy purposes / With words that made them known." Yet Prospero eventually finds fault with Caliban, claiming that "But thy vile race / Though thou didst learn, had that in't which good natures / Could not abide to be with" (Shakespeare 1.2.353–360). That Prospero locates this fault in Caliban's "vile race" rather than his individual character reveals Prospero's unabashed bigotry, and thus casts doubt on the veracity of his claims regarding Caliban's moral deficiencies.

Even the reason for their falling out follows a common European colonialist stereotype applied to conquered minorities: Prospero accuses Caliban of attempting to rape Miranda. While one might initially be inclined to believe Prospero, Miranda does not mention the attempted rape, and throughout the play Prospero is shown to be a cruel, bigoted, and deeply unreliable narrator. The moments in which Prospero directly contradicts himself or makes statements at odds with observable reality are too numerous to catalogue here, but it is safe to assert that his word can only ever be regarded with cautious skepticism. Following the accusation, Caliban does not deny that Prospero prevented him from peopling "this isle with Calibans," but he does not comment one way or the other on Prospero's particular characterization of events. The veracity of Prospero's claim remains in doubt; regardless, the accusation — coupled with Prospero's treatment of Caliban and their previously harmonious relationship — demonstrates how Caliban is used to represent the anxieties of the colonizer regarding the revolutionary or otherwise uncooperative potential of the colonized. This detail is important, because the character of Mustafa Sa'eed in Season of Migration to the North represents an inversion of these tropes, enacting the colonizer's worst fears in an ultimately fruitless attempt at revenge.

In Season of Migration to the North, the unnamed protagonist attempts to piece together the story of Mustafa Sa'eed, a resident of his village whom he meets upon returning to Sudan after studying in England — a man who has had a disturbingly parallel experience to his own. Although the problems of colonialism are pervasive throughout the story, Sa'eed's romantic experiences in England serve as the crux of the narrative and the location of the greatest congruence between the two texts. While in England, Sa'eed seduces four women; at least two eventually commit suicide, and the fourth — his wife — dies at his own hand. The word "seduce" is used here intentionally, because Sa'eed's own description paints this picture, ultimately enacting the patriarchal colonizer's fear of the Other's sexuality as expressed by Prospero's accusation of Caliban.

In particular, Sa'eed points to his own destructively seductive nature in his interactions with Isabella Seymour. He tells her: "I mean you no harm, except to the extent that the sea is harmful when ships are wrecked against its rocks, and to the extent that the lightning is harmful when it rends a tree in two," and after she "cried out weakly 'No. No.'," Sa'eed offers the clearest description of his nature: "This will be of no help to you now. The critical moment when it was in your power to refrain from taking the first step has been lost. I caught you unawares; at that time it was in your power to say 'No'" (Salih 35, 37). Sa'eed is undoubtedly conflicted about his role; he frequently compares himself to Othello, and appears to understand that he is enacting a very specific stereotype regarding colonized peoples and minorities. His enactment of this stereotype can be seen as intentional — a self-destructive strategy of embodying the stereotype in order to purge it from a collective consciousness.

When his representative defends Sa'eed at his trial regarding the deaths of the women, Sa'eed imagines shouting: "this is untrue, a fabrication. It was I who killed them. I am the desert of thirst […] I am a lie. Why don't you sentence me to be hanged and so kill the lie?" (Salih 29). Sa'eed is well aware that he is enacting a role, and the "lie" he claims to be is the lie of a colonialist stereotype — one that might finally be discarded if only it could be enacted and then destroyed through his execution. Of course, this does not occur. Sa'eed returns to Sudan to complicate the life of the narrator, demonstrating that engaging in the stereotypes of colonialism only serves to reinvigorate them. This should not, however, be taken to mean that by including a character like Sa'eed, Season of Migration to the North itself reinvigorates those stereotypes. Although the colonial connection between the two texts is clear when comparing the sexually threatening figures of Sa'eed and Caliban, it is equally important to examine critical work on either text, both to substantiate the claims made here and to consider alternate interpretations.

In his essay "Rethinking the discourse of colonialism in economic terms: Shakespeare's The Tempest, captain John Smith's Virginia narratives, and the English response to vagrancy," Paul Cefalu examines how the colonialist elements in The Tempest can be considered in economic as well as racial or ethnic terms. He notes that "anticolonialist critics have sought to 'demystify the national myths' of empire and to write an alternative history of the colonial encounter" by focusing on "the politics of the early modern English–Native American encounter" with an eye towards "moments of textual rupture and contradiction in early modern texts such as The Tempest" (Cefalu 85). One may identify the scene of Prospero's accusation as one such moment. Cefalu examines Caliban extensively, albeit in relation to his economic status as a colonized individual rather than his racial or ethnic identity. According to Cefalu, Caliban "learns not one, but two languages in the play […]: the language taught to him by Miranda is the language of a natural economy and precapitalist values; the language he internalizes by the end of the play (one that he teaches himself) approximates the language of instrumental labor and capital" (Cefalu 106). Cefalu still sees Caliban as the locus of colonial discourse in The Tempest, but focuses on the economic colonization represented through Caliban's character rather than the racial and ethnic tensions embodied by Prospero's bigotry.

Cefalu's interpretation is important because it offers context for the consideration of Caliban and Prospero presented here. Bigotry and racism are rarely ends in themselves; they are most often deployed as means of justifying the atrocities committed in the name of an ulterior ideology. In this case — and throughout much of colonial history — the particular ideology served by bigotry is capitalism. Cefalu's analysis does not contradict the assertion that Caliban and Prospero's relationship is predicated on ethnic hostility and colonialist stereotypes; rather, it points out that their combative relationship ultimately serves capitalism's purposes.