While Miranda’s Papa locks himself away in his tower, delving into the chymical secrets of the universe, the children set out to explore the island. And so she devotes herself to the wild boy, persuading him to tell her his name – Caliban – and teaching him to speak, to count, to do small tasks around the palace, and to feel affection. After all, he’s the only one she might ever have. Miranda’s Papa thinks the boy has lost his wits and is ready to charm him into dull submission, but little Miranda is determined not to lose a potential friend.
Confined to a cell, this feral child rages at his lack of freedom and shows no more self-awareness than a beast. Miranda is six when her father captures the wild boy. Jacqueline’s Carey elegant novel draws out some of these allusions and offers a subtle retelling of the story, in which a childhood friendship between two motherless children develops into a heartbreaking study of the loss of innocence. But, if we look more closely, there are hints that all may not be so simple. The play, like the island, is dominated by Prospero’s will and superficially we see nothing to counteract this stinging denunciation. He has greeted all Prospero’s efforts to civilise him with brutish indifference and, worst of all, he has repaid the magician’s kindnesses by trying to debauch Prospero’s young daughter Miranda. In Act 1, Scene 2 of The Tempest, Prospero launches a virulent verbal attack on his servant Caliban: he is ‘filth’, a ‘poisonous slave’, ‘hag-seed’.
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