Summary
The novel opens with the central character, Felix, brushing his teeth in his run-down shack. He reflects briefly on his desire for revenge against "that devious, twisted bastard, Tony," but before readers receive any more information, the novel flashes back to when Felix was the Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Festival. Felix looks back on the Shakespearean productions he had put on as part of this position -- Julius Caesar, King Lear, Titus Andronicus, etc. -- and is amazed at his own directorial prowess. The narrator explains that Felix was married to a woman named Nadia, but she left him shortly after their marriage, forcing Felix into the role of single father to his newborn daughter, Miranda. At four years old, Miranda contracted meningitis and passed away. Felix thinks about Miranda constantly, and he does not know what to do with his sorrow and grief. The narrator announces that his production of The Tempest is, for Felix, a space in which to resurrect Miranda: "He would create a fit setting for this reborn Miranda he was willing into being" (16).
The novel flashes back once again to Felix's position as Artistic Director, only this time it takes readers through the usurpation of Felix by Tony, with assistance from Sal O'Nally, the Heritage Minister of the festival. Tony explains to Felix that the board has decided to terminate his contract and that he, Tony, will be taking over. Felix is angry and is soon escorted out of the building by two security guards. Outside, he runs into Lonnie Gordon, Chair of the Festival, who tries to tell Felix that his firing is not his fault. Felix is frustrated and wants to isolate himself from the world. Eventually, he finds the run-down shanty where he will spend the remainder of the novel. He speaks with the owner, Maude, who lives in the house next door, and they agree on a price for rent. Felix moves into the shack shortly after they meet.
After he moves in, Felix begins working on the house, cleaning it up and reorganizing to maximize the small space. He grapples with depression, thinks seriously about taking his own life, and continues to grieve for Miranda. Then, his mood shifts and he decides instead that he will get revenge on Tony and Sal by putting on his version of The Tempest he had always dreamed of performing while he was Artistic Director. That night, when he goes to sleep, he dreams of succeeding in his revenge plot. For the next few days, Felix begins imagining that Miranda is with him: though she died at age four, he imagines her with him at five, six, seven, and eight years old. He is comforted by her presence despite the fact that it is a figment of his own imagination.
Felix gets a job as the director/producer for Fletcher Correctional Facility's Literacy Through Literature program. He meets its founder, Estelle, and the two flirt briefly with one another. The novel flashes forward to catalog a number of Felix's successful productions, such as Richard III and Macbeth. The class is popular among the inmates. During his twelfth year teaching, he happens upon his old costumes for the original production of The Tempest he had planned to put on at Makeshiweg. Holding Prospero's animal pelt in his hands, Felix decides it is nearly time to try again.
Analysis
The first part of the novel helps establish the initial allegorical connection between Felix and Prospero from The Tempest. Just as Prospero is unseated as Duke of Milan by his brother Antonio, Felix's position as Artistic Director at Makeshiweg is abruptly usurped by Tony Price. Thus, the beginning of the novel in which Felix is isolated in his shanty parallels the beginning of Shakespeare's The Tempest where Prospero and his daughter Miranda are isolated on a remote island. The opening of the novel also introduces one of its major themes: the desire for revenge, an obsession that plagues both Felix and Prospero in their respective stories.
One of the major ways that Felix's character apparently departs from its mirroring of Prospero is in his loss of his daughter Miranda. Whereas Prospero lives with Miranda on the island, Felix suffers from extreme grief over the loss of his daughter at such a young age. However, this grief expressed by Felix actually helps to further his connection with Prospero, as it is suggested early on and throughout the novel that Felix's grief is precisely what leads him to want to control his surroundings. Even though Miranda is a figment of Felix's imagination, the opening of the novel suggests that he refuses to let go of his own grief, a stagnancy that is compared to Prospero's extreme regulating of Miranda (for her own safety, and partly for his own ego) and even his servant-master relationship with Ariel. As such, part one of the book introduces readers to Felix as a complex character that has been wronged by others and has flaws of his own that he will have to eventually overcome.
Readers may find it difficult to engage with the character of Felix: while he is the protagonist of Hag-Seed, his compulsive desire for revenge and inability to overcome his sorrow over Miranda's death make him a difficult character to sympathize with at times. Is Felix a villain? A hero? A misogynist? A victim? These are, of course, the same questions readers and audiences continue to ask about Shakespeare's Prospero, and the first part of the novel suggests that these same qualities can be attributed to a contemporary protagonist in an entirely different genre of literature (i.e. the novel).
