Caliban is a product of nature, the offspring of the witch Sycorax and the devil.

Prospero has made

Caliban his servant or, more accurately, his slave. Throughout most of the play, Caliban is insolent and
rebellious and is only controlled through the use of magic. Caliban claims the island as his own and
maintains that Prospero has tricked him in the past.

Caliban represents the black magic of his mother and initially appears bad, especially when judged by
conventional civilized standards. Because Prospero has conquered him, Caliban plots to murder
Prospero in revenge. It is clear, though, that Caliban is a poor judge of character: He embraces Stefano
as a god and trusts his two drunken conspirators to help him carry out a plot to murder Prospero. In
many ways, Caliban is an innocent, reacting to emotional and physical needs without the ability to think
through and fully understand the events and people who surround him. He is truly a child of nature,
uneducated and reacting to his surroundings in much the same way that an animal does.Before
Prospero’s arrival, Caliban was free to roam the entire island and when Prospero arrived he took him
into his own cell and tried to teach him things, including language, but when Caliban tried to violate
Miranda, Prospero confined him to a stone cave and a limited area around it. By the time the play opens
Caliban has become angry and bitter and insists “This island’s mine!” When he meets two survivors of
the shipwreck, Stephano and Trinculo, he persuades the two comic characters to help him stage a coup
to overthrow Prospero. The revolutionaries are ridiculous – the scenes relating to that attempt are
highly comical – and the plot fails.

It is not difficult to see the similarities between this subplot and the European colonialism that has
caused so much trouble and suffering in the world. Exploitation, revolution and countless deaths have
been its history since Shakespeare’s time. In the hands of an imaginative stage director, Caliban could be
seen as a modern freedom fighter, striving to shake off the oppressor.

The ending of the play is unclear in terms of what happens to Caliban. The last we see of him is in Act V
scene 1, when he is ushered on stage along with Stefano and Trinculo dressed in the clothes they have
stolen from Prospero. They are all suitably chagrined to have been caught red-handed, and Caliban in
particular is embarrassed and ashamed to have taken the two men for gods and is concerned about
what Prospero will do to him. Note his last words when Prospero forgives him and tells him to go to his
rooms:
Ay, that I will; and I'll be wise hereafter,

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass

Was I to take this drunkard for a god,

And worship this dull fool!

The audience can only assume that when Prospero leaves the island, as he says he will do at the end of
this play, he will leave Caliban on the island to live on his own island untroubled by Prospero any longer.
It would be hard to imagine that Prospero would take such a figure with him to the mainland as he
assumes his position in court. His precise fate is, however, not specified.