Summary
In the Epilogue, Felix has regained his old job of Artistic Director and is preparing for a cruise in aboard which he will direct performances. The narrator explains that he has hired Fred, Sal's son, to help him, and that Felix was able to get 8Handz early parole so that he could join him on the cruise and hopefully procure a new job.
As Felix is packing, he sees Miranda again and begins feeling guilty for how his grief has manifested: "What has he been thinking, keeping her tethered to him all this time? Forcing her to do his bidding? How selfish he has been!" (292.) In the final lines of the novel, Felix announces to his imagined Miranda, "to the elements be free," the same lines Prospero uses to free Ariel at the end of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
Analysis
The conclusion of the novel presents the reader with even more continued parallels between Hag-Seed and The Tempest, namely the allegorical relationship between 8Handz and Ariel. By the end of the novel, it is clear that 8Handz has become a respected assistant or colleague of Felix's, much as Ariel is presented at the end of The Tempest after doing most of Prospero's bidding. This shift is, once again, a sign of growth in Felix as he moves from presiding as an authority over 8Handz to being a coworker.
Finally, the epilogue also features Felix grappling, for the first time, with his grief head-on. Rather than continuing to imagine Miranda at different points in his life, Felix decides to let her go -- that is, to live his life with the memory of his daughter as part of him rather than fantasizing about the impossibility of remaking her. His final lines, "to the elements be free," suggests that his grief was manifesting as a desire to control even his late daughter, and the experience with Fletcher Correctional has helped him reach a point where he can remember his daughter fondly without living entirely in the past or in a fantasy world. Such growth, once again, mirrors Prospero's relinquishing of his magic powers at the The Tempest, and for both texts readers end on a note of optimism and relative stability.
