Hag-Seed Literary Elements

Novel

Small-town and remote areas of Canada

The novel features a third-person narrator but is told primarily from Felix's perspective. One of the signature styles Atwood uses is free indirect discourse, which is a form of writing where the third-person narrator takes on the voice of a particular character without quoting directly. And example of this is when Felix thinks about the plays he has performed. The narrator says, "And Hermione's return to life as a vampire in The Winter's Tale: that had actually been booed. Felix had been delighted: What an effect! Who else had ever done it? Where there are boos, there's life!" (13.)

Because of the use of free indirect discourse, the narrator often has a sympathetic but skeptical tone in the novel. Readers are encouraged to support Felix in his quest for revenge but are also made aware that that very quest is one of his major character flaws. The novel, at times, has a melancholy mood as Felix becomes more and more isolated from his environment. At other times, the novel is able to achieve a more lighthearted and playful mood, particularly when Felix is teaching at Fletcher Correctional Facility and encouraging his students to think freely.

Felix vs. Tony and Sal; Felix vs. Himself

There are two major conflicts in the novel. First, the catalyst for Felix's revenge is that his role as Artistic Director at Makeshiweg has been usurped by Tony Price with the help of Sal O'Nally. This conflict helps jumpstart the plot of the novel in which Felix plots his theatrical revenge. Second, Felix grapples with internal conflict throughout the book as he is overwhelmed by his desire for revenge and imprisoned by his grief over his daughter Miranda's death. It is this conflict, ultimately, that must be resolved in order for Felix to move on and show growth as a character.

The climax of the novel comes during the screening of The Tempest, after the ministers of justice have been captured, drugged, and forced to play by Felix's rules. Felix reveals himself to the men as the orchestrator of the entire event before demanding his old job back and resolving one of the major conflicts in the novel.

Because Hag-Seed is based on Shakespeare's The Tempest, readers familiar with the play will be able to recognize elements of plot and character that align well with the original. As such, familiarity with The Tempest will provide readers with a significant amount of foreshadowing for the novel. The conclusion, for example, features a "happy ending," an attribute of Elizabethan comedies and romances that differs wildly from tragedy.

Because so much of the novel is dedicated to exploring the efficacy of the theater, very little is understated. The novel itself reads as a small "drama," featuring larger-than-life characters and hyperbolized conflict. Because readers are most often acquainted with Felix's thoughts, the novel is more invested in highlighting how he operates as an agent of the theatrical space, where everything is markedly exaggerated and performative.

The primary allusions that occur in the novel are to The Tempest itself. Certain characters align with certain theatrical characters -- Felix and Prospero, for example -- but not so overtly that the novel is a direct retelling of the original play. Instead, the novel uses allusions to The Tempest to catapult the play's themes into a contemporary setting and context.

See the separate "Imagery" section of this ClassicNote.

The primary paradox in the novel is Felix's own internal conflict: he is paralyzed by grief over his daughter, but in order to move on from it, he must go through the process of exacting his revenge on Tony and Sal. Miranda cannot truly be "free" until Felix has learned the lessons that Prospero learned in The Tempest.

Due to the nature of the novel, parallelism is one of the key literary elements operative in Hag-Seed. There is overt parallelism between characters (Felix and Prospero, 8Handz and Ariel, etc.) as well as settings (prison/island), themes, and major conflict. While not every element of the novel aligns neatly with an element of the play, the major literary qualities of The Tempest reappear in Hag-Seed. The novel is even told in five parts, just as the original play performed in five acts.

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Just like The Tempest, Hag-Seed comes to personify the setting (Fletcher Correctional Facility) as a living, breathing organism that can shift and change without warning if one is unfamiliar with its structure. The island in The Tempest has the same effect on the shipwrecked characters, and as such both the island and the prison come to inhabit "character" roles of their own.