87 pages • 2 hours read
Margaret AtwoodHag-Seed: William Shakespeare's The Tempest Retold
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Character Analysis
Felix Phillips/Duke
Felix is the main character of Hag-Seed. Though the novel is narrated in the third person, Felix’s feelings and actions are the center of the narrative voice. Felix is an eccentric artistic director of a prestigious Shakespearean festival, but his life is turned upside down when he loses first his wife and daughter (to two separate tragic illnesses) and then his job (when a former friend and colleague, Tony, fires him and takes over his role). Felix spends the next 12 years largely secluded from society, nursing hallucinations of his dead daughter. He takes a job teaching Shakespeare at a prison, where he builds a reputation for developing literacy through Shakespeare. This enables him to enact his revenge upon Tony.
Felix is an unreliable narrator; at times he is clear about his bad intentions and deep resentments, while at other times he is in denial about his own wrongdoings. Felix creates a prison out of his own mind and finds a blueprint for his inner conflict in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He even changes his name from Felix Phillips to Felix Duke, a direct homage to the former Duke of Milan, Prospero. Felix models himself on Prospero, the vengeful sorcerer who also imprisons himself psychologically. Hag-Seed follows Felix on his warped redemption arc from angry to dejected.
Miranda
Miranda is a multifaceted character in Hag-Seed. Several characters fill this role. There is the Miranda from The Tempest, who serves as the model for Felix’s ideal daughter. There is the Miranda of Felix’s past, his dead daughter, whom he revives by imagining that she is still alive and growing with him. This specter of his daughter gives Felix feelings of comfort and control, though his control is only over the impossible daughter who never was: In Felix’s home (and mind), Miranda is docile, sweet, and always a joy, which inadvertently strips her of her potential humanity.
Anne-Marie is the actress and dancer whom Felix hires to play the role of Miranda in his prison adaptation of The Tempest. Anne-Marie as her own character embodies the tomboyish, tough, educated, and beautiful qualities of the play's Miranda. Anne-Marie follows her literary counterpart’s path when she falls in love with Freddie, the Hag-Seed version of Ferdinand. Thus, Hag-Seed's Miranda is an amalgam of characters and symbols.
8Handz
8Handz is a prisoner who studies Shakespeare with Felix at the Fletcher Correctional Institution. 8Handz is gifted in special effects, so Felix arranges for his early release in return for his help in setting up the immersive experience that frightens and threatens the ministers. In both Felix’s production and in the novel itself, 8Handz fills the role of Ariel. In The Tempest, Ariel is the true source of magical powers. Prospero enslaves Ariel and forces him to perform magic that Prospero takes credit for, promising Ariel’s freedom in return for his illusions. Though Ariel holds his end of the bargain, it is implied that he will follow Prospero to Italy. Similarly, when 8Handz is released from prison, Felix brings 8Handz on a cruise with him, using the excuse that the first days out of prison can be traumatic. Felix still needs 8Handz’s talents, just as Prospero couldn’t be Prospero without Ariel.
Tony
Tony is the antagonist of Hag-Seed. He arranges for Felix’s firing when Felix is at his most vulnerable following the tragic deaths of his wife and daughter. Tony takes over Felix’s role and then climbs up the ladder to political power. When Tony is imprisoned in the immersive performance, Felix and 8Handz tape Tony encouraging the murders of his political rivals. Tony is pure bad, just as his Shakespearean counterpart, Antonio, is irremediably evil. In The Tempest, Antonio plots to kill everyone in his way to ultimate power, including the king and his own brother. Neither Antonio nor Tony have any positive qualities to balance out the bad. Tony is a classic antagonist, one whose corruption outmatches and outweighs even Felix’s questionable deeds and intentions.
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By Margaret Atwood
