Parker Verhoeff
English 9
Mr. Salsich
8 January 2009
Brotherly Tension
An Analysis of a passage from Shakespeare’s The Tempest
In Act 1, Scene 2 of The Tempest, Prospero profoundly explains to Miranda how evil his brother, Antonio is, and why it was okay to inflict a horrible storm on his ship. Prospero doesn’t know how “a brother [could] be so perfidious!”-how someone from his own kin could overthrow his Dukedom is beyond him. In turn, he sinks Antonio’s ship and watches him and the ship’s men perish along with it. Prospero refers to Antonio as his “false brother” and tells Miranda he’s her “false uncle”; “In my false brother awaked an evil nature” he says. He can not believe, since Antonio has done all of these things, that Antonio is actually his brother. Prospero trusted him, but Antonio took that trust and crushed it with his greed and jealousy. Miranda is still distraught about the whole thing, but then Prospero lashes back at her and tells her to “mark his condition and the event; then tell me if this might be a brother.” Prospero says to really think about what Antonio did, and then tell him whether or not this heartless thing is capable of being a brother. Thus, Prospero believes he is not capable of it, saying he’s not even his brother. Prospero defended his case well, on whether or not it was right to deliberately kill his own brother; Antonio would have done the same to him.