Confronting Colonialism in a Storm Aimé Césaire's A Tempest is an attempt to confront and rewrite the idea of ​​colonialism as presented in Shakespeare's The Tempest. He succeeds in this attempt by changing the point of view of the story. Césaire transforms characters and transposes scenes to reveal Shakespeare's Prospero as the exploiting European power and Caliban and Ariel as the exploited natives. Césaire's The Tempest is an effective response to Shakespeare's The Tempest because he interprets it from the perspective of the colonized and raises a conflict with Shakespeare as an icon of the literary canon. In The Tempest by William Shakespeare, one could argue that colonialism is a recurring theme. throughout the play due to the master-slave relationship between Ariel, Caliban, and Prospero. This is also seen through the major and minor status changes among the island's temporary inhabitants like Trinculo and Stephano (Brower 463). These relationships support the theme that power is not reciprocal and that in a society someone will be taken advantage of. Shakespeare first introduces the idea of ​​colonialism when he allows Prospero to rule Caliban, the native inhabitant of the island. This is a direct link to colonization by Europeans in the late 1400s. Caliban reveals this idea of ​​colonization in Act I Scene 2 when he says, "This island is mine by Sycorax , my mother, / That you took from me… For I am all the subjects that you have, / Which first was mine. king; and here you hold me/In this hard rock, while you keep me/The rest of the island” (Shakespeare 37). Shakespeare's diction in this dialogue as well as in Prospero's response which follows...... middle of paper .......2001 http://www.britannica.com /seo/a/aime-fernand -cesaire/ > Becker, Zachery. “A Storm by Aimé Césaire”. (1999) April 18, 2001 Brower, Ruben. Shakespeare: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. Leonard Dean. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Césaire, Aime. A storm. Trans. Richard Miller. United States: UBU Repertory Theater Publications, 1992. Hawkes, Terence. That Shakespearean Rag: essays on a critical process. New York: Methuen and Company, 1986. Mullenix, Elizabeth Reitz. “The Tempest.” Illinois Shakespeare Festival. (1996) April 18, 2001. “Negritude”. Encyclopedia Britannica. (1999): April 27, 2001 http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?idxref=283623Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. London: Washington Square Press, 1994.