Chapter 2- The “TEMPEST” in the Wilderness

In the second chapter of Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror he contrasts and compares Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” with the real life of the American Indian as the Englishmen continue to raid and dominate these body flaunting, lazy, sinful, devil driven Caliban. He shows how Indians were stained forever in history’s text as godless, lost, inhuman, savages!

In Shakespear’s play “Tempest” he refers to the Indian race as Caliban, just cannibal switched around, and he casts them as a similar race to the Irish. The impression that Englishmen had on Irishmen were all negative and civil less. Another main comparison the Irish and the Indians had was that they were described as lacking “the knowledge of God or good manners” because they were both said to be driven by the devil and could not control their actions. All of this ridiculous behavior as described by the Englishmen forced them to conquer a majority of Indians and train the Indian infants to be civilized actual human beings. They went about this manner by destroying and killing all Indians in their path and as they did so the captured and tried to teach the children of the “great American way”. They learned from all the Indians who to rotate and manage crops. After they acquired this information there was no need for the “savages” so they slaughtered all in the way. The English were on a path to make this new world an industrialized and marketing continent. But in this vision they also brought plagues. They didn’t have to kill all the Indians because the diseases and sicknesses that they carried and were mainly immune to spread over the unprotected Indian population, therefore, wiping out over half of them. Most would think this was a major tragedy but not the Englishmen they thought this was an act of god himself. They believed that the Indians suffered and died off because they were demonized savages and that it pleased god to see them perish.

All the Indians did was try to make peace with the world and all the creatures that god put on it along with doing what it takes to survive in nature. The Englishmen that swept America took their land, crops, homes, and dignity couldn’t even justify these people as human. After thinking about that who do you think is the backward race?

After reading this chapter I believe that the Indians even though they were a little inhumane in their actions and the way the dress but all in all they still had the right motive to accept all as equal and treat everyone with the same respect. All in all this became the American tradition but the way we go about life is about the complete opposite as the Indians. The Indians didn’t want to expand and build new things they only want to create what would be necessary for them to survive.