Ishmael At Home

Background Info:
Notes on Shakespeare the tempest:
 Prospero was the Duke of a province but he was overthrown by his own brother.
Prospero then exiled to the Island of Caliban who was the master of his own land. Once
Prospero came, he became the master of the Island of Caliban and enslaved him at the top
of that. In this chapter Prospero stands for Britain, the colonizing power, and Caliban stands
for the native West Indian of the Caribbean.
 Caliban in this play was portrayed as the swarthy-skinned, savage in manners, and
paradoxically eloquent. His strength was in his just cause and arguments because even
Prospero knew that he is absolutely right in claiming his own land back.
Notes on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and the biblical Ismael:
 Moby Dick is an epic novel about captain Ahab’s quest for the greatest whale Moby
Dick whose worth equals its weight in gold. This long-lasting journey brings about the end
of the whole crew except the narrator, Ismael (hence, the name of the chapter), who is but
a minor character in the story. Ismael is an allegorical name to the prophet Ismael, the son
of Abraham. According to the Christian tradition, after Abraham’s futile quest to have a
child with Sara, she allowed him to sleep with their housemaid Hajar whom afterwards gave
birth to Ismael. Once that happened, according to the Christian mythologico-philosophy
again, Sara demanded that Ismael and his mother shall be expelled to the desert so that her
late coming son Isaac takes over his father. THEREFORE, Ismail is associated with the
castaway and the exiled. You might say that O Reda, you could have made your life easier
by telling us just the conclusion. Well, if you don’t know the mythology, you want get the
underlying philosophy either. For further info about the Jewishness of the Jews, check with
Mohamed Lalej.
The main points in the chapter
When Columbus first set his direction towards the Caribbean Islands, it was a calamitous
prophecy for the natives while the journey of the greatest discovery for the ruthless
colonizers. The abundance of the Islands and the labor power of the slaves set it as the
greatest colony of all times.
Lamming since the beginning draws a parallel between the story of colonization of his
homeland with Herman Melville’s fabulous marine epic Moby Dick. Because of the
greediness of the British, the West Indians had to suffer tremendously. Lamming recounts
the suffering of the West Indian iconic writer, James, who, because of his stance with the
renegades and the castaways was exiled by the United States to the Ellis Islands.
The European colonization of the Caribbean Islands and West Africa, according to
Lamming, had been founded on a camouflage- Blinding and mystification. The colonizer
kept subjecting and undermining the natives because of his upper hand when it comes to
language and culture. The West Indian and African due to his simplicity and backwardness
had no choice but to yield everything to the European master, who it was clear he could not
resist. Lamming hints to the idea that in an abundant world, we could all lived in dignity
without someone coming to enslave the rest of humanity. The Tempest was both a
stereotypical and allegorical play that represented the Caribbean as a cannibal whose
manners and mentality are the real reasons behind his misery. Therefore, lamming denounce
this representation that dehumanize Caliban and blames him for his miserable fate the
European instigated.
The quest of the west Indian for knowledge took him to the land of his colonizer-Britain.
This journey reversed allegorically that of Prospero, and Caliban becomes the one to
discover the land of his master. Once there, Caliban started sobering-up and seeing what
the massive high waters of the Atlantic concealed. He started comprehending the dominance
that his nation is subject to back home, and therefore the struggle for liberation.
Lamming sees that the fate of his nation and that of America is more or less the same,
they were both colonized by the same Britain and both felt the need for independence.
Therefore, America should not play the role that she condemned in the first place by trying
to subject the Caribbean Islands to its own will. By refusing dependence on the United
States, Lamming wants his nation to build itself based on its own capacities and merit. A
nation built by the other and dependent on the other is not a nation at all. This stance, he
continuous, should not outrage the America for it is not meant against it at all.
 Caliban, according to Lamming, should first learn and understand in order for him to
form his nation in the best way possible and set it on the right track. For the question of
democracy, Caliban should know first the rationale behind it as well as its aims before
attempting to borrow it and implement it. Caliban should accordingly absorb that
democracy that allowed Prospero to come and humiliatingly enslave him is utterly an
undesirable system of governance. A desirable one should be concerned first and foremost
with providing the genuine necessities of the population such as health, education, and
peace. Lamming calls on the European nations to stop blackmailing black people by
undervaluing them. According to Lamming, all nations can learn sciences and technologies
that are the real wealth of the west; therefore, they should allow an equal sharing of
knowledge so that the rest of humanity stop sinking in misery and backwardness.