Discussion Guide Ariel by Grace Tiffany

4. Working in the different mediums of stage-play and novel, both Shakespeare and
Tiffany try ceaselessly to convey the sense that this island is surrounded by water.
How does Shakespeare make sure his audience never forgets that the sea surrounds
the island? (This, by the way, is no mean feat when his actors stand on a bare, landlocked
stage which lacks scenic backdrops and a modern sound system!) Does
Tiffany successfully create and maintain a similar sense of vast water around the
island, and, if so, how does she do so?
5. As a question related to question 4, how does water come into our lives? What do
watery things signify in terms of human experience? (Students are encouraged to
think of rain, solid or melting ice, sailing, drinking, birth—when “water breaks”—
swimming, baptism, dissolving, weeping.) How do those “watery” experiences figure
in The Tempest and in Ariel?
6. And, relative to questions 4 and 5, in The Tempest, when King Alonso asks Prospero,
“When did you lose your daughter?” Prospero replies “In this last tempest.” However,
we know that it is Alonso who has lost his son Ferdinand in “this last tempest”
(5.1.152-153), 1 while Prospero has not lost his daughter at all in a physical sense.
How does Tiffany’s description of Miranda’s first sight of Ferdinand on pp. 170-171,
beginning “She was at sea,” comment on and attempt to interpret Prospero’s odd
comment to Alonso in act five, scene one, of Shakespeare’s play?
7. Compare Shakespeare’s Caliban to Tiffany’s Caliban. Are they entirely different, or
does Tiffany truly appear to be basing her character on Shakespeare’s? Find at least
one specific passage or interchange of dialogue in Shakespeare’s The Tempest that
might support Tiffany’s interpretation of Caliban.
8. Is Tiffany’s Miranda anything like Shakespeare’s? Again, find passages in
Shakespeare that either justify or cast doubt on Tiffany’s version of Miranda.
Do the same with any of the other characters Tiffany represents.
9. In act five, scene one, of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Ariel tells Prospero that his
enemies Alonso and Antonio are now Prospero’s prisoners, and says, “[I]f you now
beheld them, your affections/ Would become tender” (ll. 18-19). Prospero responds,
“Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a feeling/ Of their afflictions, and shall not
myself,/ One of their kind, that relish all as sharply,/ . . . be kindlier moved than
thou art?” (ll. 21-24). He concludes that he will forgive them. Compare Prospero’s
and Ariel’s interchange to that described by Tiffany on pp. 181-183 and pp. 202-205
of Tiffany’s novel. What is the difference between the influence Shakespeare’s Ariel
has on Shakespeare’s Prospero and the influence Tiffany’s Ariel has on Tiffany’s
Prospero?
10. What is Shakespeare’s Ariel? What is Tiffany’s Ariel? Do they represent different
things? Or do they represent the same thing, and Shakespeare and Tiffany disagree
about this thing’s worth?
11. Does Tiffany’s final chapter—her epilogue—go way beyond any implications of
European—New World encounter suggested in the original The Tempest? Or do the
ideas proposed in this final chapter take their root from something in Shakespeare’s
play?
1 William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Sylvan Barnet, NY: Signet, 1998.