Hag-Seed Essay Questions

Why is the novel titled "Hag-Seed"?

While the Fletcher Correctional Players are representative of Hag-Seed, they are not the focus of this novel. Felix is, and Atwood potentially chose this title for her novel because, in one way, Felix is "hag-seed." The whole novel is focused on revealing the Caliban in Felix, who parallels his actors in Fletcher Correctional more so than any other character in the novel. Like him, they were cast off from society in an island-like setting awaiting release. Atwood gives readers a modern retelling of The Tempest and humanizes the actions of the characters. Like Prospero in The Tempest, Felix in Hag-Seed is manipulative and, above all, desires to enact his revenge on those who wronged him. The novel is about showing the relationship between the idea of Caliban's darker impulses (captured in the slur "hag-seed" from The Tempest) and Felix. He, too, deals with a darker side as he copes with the loss of his daughter, Miranda, and the loss of his position as the artistic director of the Makeshewig Theatre Festival. Atwood focuses on Felix, yes, but Hag-Seed is concerned with far more than mimicking the plot of The Tempest. It's about drawing connections to other characters and themes and asking timeless questions in a modern context.

Analyze Felix's character and motives. Is Felix is self-interested and manipulative? Is he an innocent—potentially crazy—old man who misses his daughter? Is he something else entirely?

Felix Philips is certainly a manipulative individual, acting in his own best interest. He desires, above all, his revenge on Tony Price, and he knows that he will do anything to get there. He uses the Fletcher Correctional Players (a class made up of inmates at fictional Fletcher Correctional) to put on his version of The Tempest in a way that will let him finally get his revenge. Felix desires control as well, and he lashes out when SnakeEye, one of the actors at Fletcher Correctional, tries to cut him out of Prospero's Act 1 Scene 2 speech. Felix is self-interested and desires the power owed to him in his role as Prospero, and he uses the inmates and their production of the play to reach his goal.

However, Felix is redeemable, as seen when the Players ask him about including a picture of his daughter in a slideshow for The Tempest. The narrator lets us in on his thoughts: "They're not doing this to get at him. They can't possibly know anything about him, him and his remorse, his self-castigation, his endless grief." Atwood humanizes Felix here; so, while Felix is not innocent, he is more than a simple power-hungry old man. He is human, and his interactions with Miranda and Anne-Marie Greenland redeem his character.

Most of the novel takes place at Fletcher Correctional Facility as Felix teaches in the Literature Through Literacy Program. What is the narrative impact of this being the primary setting for the production of The Tempest and the novel more generally?

Fletcher Correctional Facility becomes a significant setting because it, like The Tempest, deals with the common themes of crime, revenge, power, and imprisonment. It is through the setting of Fletcher Correctional that Atwood is able to present a number of Shakespearean characters in a contemporary context -- namely Ariel, Caliban, Miranda, and Prospero. As Felix interacts with the inmates, readers are able to analyze the relationships between persons in power and those who serve them. The novel, therefore, frequently asks readers to question the relationship between Felix and his students: is he their altruistic teacher, working tirelessly for their educational benefit, or is he using them to help enact his revenge on Tony and Sal? Like many questions in the novel, Hag-Seed remains ambivalent as to how readers are to interpret Felix's relationship with his students. It is this ambivalence and confusion over particular character dynamics that Atwood borrows from The Tempest and places in a contemporary context and setting for further consideration.

The Tempest has long been considered one of Shakespeare's most misogynistic plays -- that is, a play that stages men's disdain for women and female figures. How, if at all, does Hag-Seed engage with similar themes of misogyny?

There are misogynistic elements in Hag-Seed, particularly in the moments when Felix is thinking about the perpetual youth of his daughter. While he misses her very much, one of the primary aspects of his character which the novel critiques is his desire to "control" the memory of his daughter for himself, just as Prospero attempts to control Miranda and keep her isolated from danger. Furthermore, Felix is surprised to learn that Anne-Marie Greenland is a strong woman who can hold her own among the inmates at Fletcher Correctional, going so far as to perform a choreographed karate routine at the end of the novel to represent Miranda's unexpected strength. These assumptions about women and female figures underlie the novel, which is a text largely dominated by men—indeed, just like The Tempest, there is only one female character in this novel (Anne-Marie), a testament to the lack of space women are granted in certain creative settings.

Atwood's use of misogyny, however, is more provocative than it is celebratory. Through various characters' assumptions about women and effeminacy (the inmates refuse to play Ariel because he is described as a "fairy"), readers are able to note how misogyny still plagues certain artistic and social worlds, despite the novel taking place four centuries after Shakespeare's plays were performed. Hag-Seed is therefore not a "misogynistic" novel per se, but rather a novel that uses tropes of misogyny to question how far the world of theater and art has come since its inception in the Elizabethan era.

Prospero in The Tempest lives with Miranda on the island and is able to marry her off by the end of the play. Felix, however, lost his daughter to meningitis when she was four years old. Why do you think the novel added this element to Felix's character that seems so different from Prospero's?

As Felix points out early on to the Fletcher Correctional Facility Players, The Tempest is a play about prisons, power, and control. The inmates are encouraged to identify the different jailers and prisoners present throughout the play. At the same time, readers are able to notice how Felix himself is imprisoned by his own desire for revenge and the grief over his daughter. While Prospero attempts to control Miranda's sexuality through isolation, Felix attempts to control his daughter through the memory he has of her -- as a young, innocent, precocious child who never leaves her father's side. The contemporary context that frames Felix as a grieving father rather than simply a self-interested authoritarian leader lends his character depth that ultimately challenges the reader to question whether he is a sympathetic or unsympathetic protagonist.